CHEN Chaoyi, HUA Tianzi, WU Hui, JIN Hexian
Classical Chinese gardens fully utilize scented plants in gardening practices to create scented spaces, which not only brings people a pleasant olfactory experience, but also provides many benefits for people's physical and mental health. Therefore, it is of great significance to discuss the historical style and modern presentation of incense in classical gardens. In the middle of the Ming Dynasty, along with the economic recovery of Jiangnan and the ban on gardening, the literati gardens flourished, and a number of private gardens emerged in Suzhou for the retired literati to spend their days. "Dongzhuang" is a representative example of this. "Dongzhuang" in Suzhou in the middle of the Ming Dynasty from Wu Rong to the period of Wu Yi was investigated in this study. Combined with "Records of Dongzhuang" written by Wu Kuan's family and friends, related poems, biographies of the garden masters of the successive generations and their epitaphs, the "Diagram of Dongzhuang" and the corresponding inscribed poems, the evolutionary history of Dongzhuang and main types of scented plants in the garden in the mid-Ming Dynasty were reviewed. Moreover, the scentscape creation methods and aesthetic characteristics of typical nodes in Dongzhuang in different seasons were analyzed based on visual and olfactory performances and cultural intentions of the traditional scentscape. It was found that the full combination of various types of typical scented plants and humanistic images demonstrated key construction shifts of Dongzhuang by gardeners in different periods. The gardeners created scentscapes by combining natural environment and humanistic landscapes, and realized the expression and innovation of the literati's inner feeling through profound experiences in realistic scenes. Due to garden owners' pursuit for scented space in different times and influences of garden construction styles, "Dongzhuang" changed from a farm garden to a house garden. The garden owners created the garden landscape which has scene appreciation in all four seasons by combining plants and buildings. They used plant landscape forming techniques of the Ming Dynasty, including isolated planting, point planting, cluster planting, ring planting, and group planting, around water bodies, rooms, terrain, and other garden elements. During the pursuit of a four-season landscape, the "beauty" of plants and the "kindness" of personality were integrated to achieve personification of plants and guide visitors from the beauty of nature to the cultural characters of plants, thus enabling understanding of symbolic meanings of morality, seclusion, and leisure of gardeners. On a temporal dimension, the scented experiences of "Dongzhuang" were interpreted. The emotional connection and landscape appreciation in the past and present were connected. The presentation mode of plant scentscapes in the garden, the delivered aesthetic value of gardens, and the mapped modern healthy garden, as well as the psychological and spiritual healing philosophy in poems of "Dongzhuang" and "Diagram of Dongzhuang", can give some enlightenment for scented plant allocation and scentscape design.
