By
Jeffrey Kaczmarczyk | jkaczmarczyk@mlive.com
The Grand Rapids Press
on October 10, 2012 at 10:45 AM, updated October 10, 2012 at 11:23 AM
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GRAND RAPIDS, MI – The $22 million Japanese Garden coming to Frederik Meijer Gardens Sculpture Park is on budget and ahead of schedule to open in 2015.
A Boulder Placement Ceremony for the Richard and Helen DeVos Japanese Garden was held recently to mark the foundational beginning and start of formal construction of the 8.5-acre garden created by Japanese designer Hoichi Kurisu.
Boulders form the skeleton and foundation of the ancient Japanese art form, symbolizing the permanency of a garden.
“The boulder placement is more than a ceremonial beginning of the Japanese Garden,” said Meijer Gardens president and CEO David Hooker. “It’s the foundation on which the garden will thrive for generations to come.”
A traditional art form in Japanese culture, a Japanese garden is an idealized depiction of a natural setting.
The Japanese Garden, located in the northeast corner of the 132-acre campus, between the Lena Meijer Conservatory and Michigan’s Farm Garden, will re-imagine existing features of the land, water, elevation changes and quiet surroundings with such elements as a tea house, bridges and waterfalls.
Patrons Richard and Helen DeVos and Lena Meijer were among those at the dedication on Tuesday, which included remarks by Kurisu and a video of him supervising placement of the first boulders at the site.
A native of Hiroshima, born in 1939, Kurisu grew up in the aftermath of the atomic bomb that the United State dropped on Japan to end World War II. The experience, he says, inspired him to make landscape design his life’s work.
Though in-demand as a designer, Kurisu said his first impressions of Grand Rapids convinced him to submit a proposed design, one of several that Meijer Gardens considered before awarding the contract.
“This town looks like everyone got together to do something,” Kurisu said on Tuesday. “This is a place I could do something.”
Kurisu has relocated his residence to Grand Rapids to supervise the three-year project.
“He is intensely passionate and about his design,” Hooker said.
Kuninori Matsuda, consul general of Japan, who was at Meijer Gardens on Tuesday, called the project a “historic, without exaggeration, occasion” that has been noted by his fellow countrymen and women, not only living in the United States, but back in Japan as well.
“I have no doubt the Richard and Helen DeVos Garden will be a must-see,” Matsuda said.
Creation of an international garden at Meijer Gardens was a longstanding goal dating back more than a decade at the cultural destination that has drawn 7.5 million visitors since it opened.
“This has been the most exciting opportunity I’ve had in my 16 years at the Gardens,” said Steven LaWarre, director of horticulture at Meijer Gardens.
About156 individuals, families, companies and foundations have donated to the project, which met its fundraising goal in May.
“The one thing they all have in common is the motivation and joy of giving,” Hooker said.
Original plans called for construction to begin in the spring of 2013. But successful fundraising and favorable conditions allowed work to move ahead, with Kurisu’s approval.
“He responded with grace and enthusiasm,” Hooker said. “We’re currently ahead of schedule by seven months.”
E-mail Jeffrey Kaczmarczyk: jkaczmarczyk@mlive.com
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