Japanese Garden Fence

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Japanese Garden Fence is a more complicated subject than I can ever hope to understand. It's a real art form, with over a hundred different styles of fence, many truly ancient in design. Even the knots are a work of art. But here's an overview.

Japanese Garden Fence

As always, there are formal, semi-formal, and informal types of Japanese Garden Fence. Some fences will be suggestive of a rustic setting, others are more appropriate to a temple setting.

Texture is important in the Japanese Garden Fence. For example, you might choose a fence to contrast in texture with the plants around it, and vice versa.

Japanese fence knot Traditional fences can be very expensive, and so can bamboo for making fences. If your budget won't stretch to the real thing, reed or twig sheeting can now be bought pretty inexpensively at garden centres, and so you can create a fence with the feel of a certain kind of Japanese fence by stapling or wiring that kind of sheeting to your existing garden boundary.

Types of Japanese Garden Fence

At the broadest level, there are two kinds of Japanese Garden Fence. Oo-gaki is continuous fencing – what we think of as fencing, ie it forms a long boundary. Sode-gaki, on the other hand, are screen fences: a single panel of fencing, used to screen off an area of the garden. They're often used at the end of a verandah, or beside a tsukubai. They're usually about 3 or 4 feet wide, and about 6 foot high. They come in a huge range of styles, each with its own name. Some are rectangular, many have a curve at the top corner which is away from the wall.

Types of Oogaki Japanese Garden Fence

Here are a few types of oogaki:

Kenninji japanese fenceKenninji fence

A formal fence, named after a famous temple in Kyoto. It's made of quartered bamboo placed vertically very close together, and is held together with horizonal bamboo bars and hemp rope.

Teppo gaki

Another formal fence. Teppo ('tube' or 'musket') fences are made from whole bamboo pipes. Unlike Kenninji fences, there are small gaps between the bamboo. The pipes are also offset in two rows, so for example you might have three pipes at the front and three behind, repeating.

Taimatsu gaki

Taimatsu (torch) fences are semi-formal, and made from bundles of twiggy branches tied together vertically.

YotsumegakiYotsume gaki

Yotsume (four-eyes) fences are informal, and made from narrow pieces of bamboo tied together in a loose square lattice. They tend to be short, and you can see right through them. Here's an article which shows the construction of a yotsume fence – it's one of the easier ones to try at home.

Yarai gaki

Yarai (stockade) fencing is informal. It's a bit like yotsume turned through 45 degrees – it's another lattice, but with diamonds instead of squares. It doesn't have a horizontal pole across the top – the ends of the bamboo stick out a little way, looking like the stockade fence it's named for.

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Types of Sodegaki

Here are a few types of sodegaki:

Like the teppo-gaki described above, these are made with large whole bamboo pipes.

Chasengaki

'Tea whisk fence' – like taimatsu gaki, these are made from bundles of branches, arranged vertically.