by Laura Read

Homestead Magazine

Many people think of gardens as showcases for flowers, but to garden builder Bill Castellon, they are all about rocks. For eight years he worked with master landscape designer Mas Imazumi, honing the Japanese approach to placing rocks in poetic compositions. Now he is one of the few in northern California who is especially gifted at the craft.

Castellon’s garden interests started after high school when he worked at greenhouses in rural Pennsylvania. In 1975 he moved to San Francisco, where he became intrigued with bonsai, the Japanese art of growing miniature trees in small containers. One day in a bonsai class taught by Imazumi, he showed his teacher a photo of a rock composition he’d recently completed for clients. “Mas looked at it and said, ‘Next time get me to help you!’” Castellon recalls. “I did, and we built 10 gardens together before he passed away.”

To be a rock specialist in the Japanese tradition is to be trained in creating gardens that often suggest water, but in fact contain no water.  These are called dry landscapes. Two of Castellon’s favorite projects display two common types: the karesansui, or viewing garden, and the stroll garden.

In Lafayette, Lisa and Andy Mayeda installed a karesansui on top of a reclaimed swimming pool. Landscape architect Sue Oda drew the overall plan, which splits the meditation garden into two asymmetrical lobes hinged by a central peninsula, like the two humps of a heart. The Mayedas commissioned Castellon to give the rocks their alluring placements.

Castellon’s challenge was to find rocks of just the right scale and shape, and to arrange them for soothing harmony and balance.

“You want all the rocks to be of different sizes or to appear to be of different sizes,” Castellon says. “They vary in height and spacing. It’s a challenge to make the garden look not contrived.”

He’s an expert at recognizing a dynamic energy created when objects are placed in relationship to one another. “The dynamic tension is what we hope for,” he says. “In the old dry gardens in Japan, there’s a play of energy between the rocks. The vertical lines create tension, the horizontal lines create serenity and stability, and the diagonal lines create motion.”

The rocks come from the northern Central Valley, where over many years they’ve grown blooms of moss and lichen on their faces. Once settled in the garden, the rocks may suggest mountain landscapes. “Or they can represent family units,” Castellon says. “The mom and dad are the bigger rocks, and the younger children are the rocks close by. The elder child often has left home and is alone off by itself.”

Sometimes it’s clear exactly where the rock belongs, and at what angle, Castellon says. Other times, the placement can be quite a challenge. “It’s an emotional thing,” he says. “If it’s not right, I’m not happy.”

Lisa Mayeda says the garden is exactly what she wanted: a place for reflection and enjoyment. “In the evening, the lantern light comes on and the rocks seem to glow,” she says.

“You’re always playing with people’s senses when you’re doing a Japanese garden,” Castellon says. “It’s a lot of fun.”

A few miles away in Olinda, Stu and Jane Bowyer’s stroll garden encourages the viewer to go slow and wander. Castellon’s dry landscape complements a previously built Japanese-style waterfall. His concept begins at the Bowyer’s driveway, where a craggy Japanese black pine tree welcomes visitors. Trees like this are grown in pots for as many as 50 years, and their limbs are pruned by experts to form attractive patterns. At the garden gate there’s a vignette of a black pine and two rocks set to appear as if they were once joined and now have cracked apart.

A path rounds a corner to where the garden unfolds with magical serenity. There is no water in this half of the garden, and yet there’s a mysterious suggestion of water, achieved partly by contrasting scales, colors and textures. Small pebbles cause a flat area to resemble a lake that’s reflecting gray clouds. Stepping stones beckon the viewer to meander across it. At one point they tuck into a “bay” where a person can pause by a dry streambed.

Across the lake, the path diverges. One route climbs to a waterfall overlook; the other circles to the waterfall’s base. The result is a slow immersion in a setting of simple, natural beauty that speaks to the elegance and wisdom of age and time.