Windsmith Design

Mark, the owner of Windsmith Design has been our garden consultant and specialized gardener to our Japanese garden, here at Everett Community College, since early 2019. Mark has apprenticed in traditional Japanese gardens in Kyoto, and is a true professional and historian who is very knowledgeable in garden design and proper maintenance of gardens. He has been a life saver in helping us salvage our deteriorating garden by pruning the trees properly and giving us sound advice as to how we can improve our garden towards the future. It is clear to see the true passion and pride he has for his work, and the end result has been amazing. We look forward to working with him for many years to come!

Mark and I had a wonderful architect-landscape designer collaboration on a Japanese inspired contemporary garden in Laurelhurst as well as on other smaller project in the past 2 years. Mark understands architectural design and gives great feedback. I trust his eye on the details and he is fun to work with. Mark Bourne is perhaps the finest Japanese garden designer in the Seattle area, but his design aesthetic, inspired by Japanese simplicity, easily translates into contemporary landscapes complements and elevates modern or mid-century architecture. His ideas are unique and artistic and he has the practical knowledge to shape the land, place rocks just right, find the plants needed and run a crew. With Mark, you get the rare and valuable combination of a garden designer with artisan hands-on knowledge and skill as well as someone who sees the architect as a part of the team. I look forward to working with Mark Bourne in the future and highly recommend Mark to other architects and individuals looking for authentic Japanese garden design or exquisite modern garden design.

Green Gulch Farm Zen Center - a temple of San Francisco Zen Center, near the coast in Marin County, CA ¬- is fortunate to have a traditionally designed and constructed teahouse as well as roji, the indispensable setting for a thorough presentation and study of the Way of Tea. Having studied the Way of Tea for many years, including a year at the Midorikai Program at Urasenke Konnichian in Kyoto, I am the director of the tea program at Green Gulch. We have on-going classes and also offer tea gatherings for school groups and the general public. The Green Gulch roji was designed and constructed by Mark Bourne, who continues to supervise its pruning and maintenance. At its inception, the roji was begun by a gardener who didn’t understand its relationship to the teahouse and the specific elements that distinguish the roji from the many other styles of Japanese gardens. Some years later, due to a number of problems, such as the presence of 3 formally pruned Black Pines, and a red Maple that was too eye-catching, we started working with Mark. Our goal was to revision and re-design the roji, in accord with the concept of wabi, to make the garden more appropriate to its setting and function. At the beginning of the design process, Mark and I had extensive discussions of the meaning of “wabicha,” and what this would mean, given the climate and plant material of the California coast. The roji is the “dewy path” leading from the outside world to the teahouse. It allows and encourages guests to a tea gathering to drop their worries and concerns, and settle themselves before entering the tearoom. Mark’s understanding of this concept and how it functions, imbues his design decisions, his pruning, his placement of stones. Mark is skilled and experienced not only in design, but in pruning, construction, and stonework. He emphasized the importance of cultivating larger (30 foot tall) trees in the roji, and in pruning that creates a clear ground plane. He removed the original main path, stones laid on a concrete foundation, replacing it with traditionally set stones, which immediately transformed the entire garden, imparting a grounded, settled feeling. He replaced and re-situated inner bamboo fences, re-oriented stepping stone paths to feel intuitive rather than contrived, and rebuilt the tsukubai, hand-carving the stone water basin. The wabicha style of gardening, closely associated with the aesthetics of wabi-sabi, is particularly demanding. In developing our new roji design, Mark and I not only studied images in Japanese books, but drew on our experiences studying, working in, and viewing gardens in Kyoto, as well as our understanding of the Way of Tea. We gradually moved more and more toward using native California plants, in accord with the original spirit and intent of a traditional Kyoto roji, rather than trying to literally create a garden that would belong in Kyoto but be out of place in California. An important Edo period essay on tea – the “Zen Tea Record,” describes the roji as the place where one’s true nature is disclosed, the site of enlightenment. I think that this concept underlies Mark’s work as a landscape gardener and that it’s influence is subtly felt by all who enter the Green Gulch roji. (This project began in 2008 and is ongoing.)

It’s hard to give Mark Bourne enough kudos for the wonderful Japanese garden he designed and built for us. We have a 1960’s house, and Mark successfully coordinated its modern style with traditional JG design concepts. He designed a handsome, four-post main entry gate with traditional hefty, square cedar posts supporting modern black metal cross-beams. He designed and built a traditional Japanese, mortar-set, stone stepping path (Nobedan) to the house. It gives the garden a sense of substance, and it’s safe - the stones don’t shift, and guests won’t trip. Mark spent considerable time with us planning the garden. He asked us about the sight lines from inside the house to the garden, and he adjusted garden features accordingly. Now in the winter, we enjoy the garden with DR, kitchen, and entry hall views. As far as selecting plants, he questioned us about our likes/dislikes down to the right “shade of green”. Again-and again Mark demonstrated his understanding and attention to quality and detail. Thick, granite, 30cm squares were perfect for our patio, but the cost at local stone yards was far beyond budget. Mark had connections with a stone yard outside San Francisco, and the final costs for us (including shipping) were a fraction of the costs at local stone yards. We wanted “stone logs” to form the entry steps to the garden. It was impossible to find stone that had a suitable surface finish/color at local stone yards. Mark discovered the “right-colored stone” at a quarry within driving distance, drove a rental truck to the quarry, selected a chunk of limestone, brought it home, and cleaved/fashioned the stone logs himself! Detail was never compromised, and it speaks to his cost consciousness ethic. Mark had the knowledge and extensive experience to get the entire job done right for us: **CAD based design skills to plan for and manage elevation changes. This was critical because of the rapid rise from the sidewalk to our house. ** Stone yard experience and practiced excavator/backhoe driver. Mark went to the stone yard himself and selected specific boulders, the largest was almost 7’ tall; and he drove the excavator/back hoe to seat the boulders in the garden! Now these boulders look like they’ve been in place for decades. **Horticultural experience in plant selection and plant care from Japan and on the West Coast. He chose plants that are interesting, but not so flamboyant that they detract from the overall garden design . . . . And most of all : **Fundamental understanding of Japanese gardens. . . . We’ve had many compliments about the garden. Few people zero in on a single aspect of the garden, not the pink camellia, not the tall rock, not the modern gate, etc. Complements are for the entire garden. We feel the same way. We wanted a place to relax with a piece of nature. Mark’s garden does that for us.

Mark has unparalleled expertise in the history and art of Japanese gardens, and a keen interest in sharing the lessons he learned from working in some of the most revered Zen gardens in Kyoto, Japan. I had the pleasure of bringing him aboard as the Scholar-in-Residence at the Seattle Japanese Garden, where he serves as a regular contributor to the blog and helps to elevate the knowledge base of the staff, board members and volunteers. His passion for Japanese gardens is infectious, and his attention to detail is meticulous.