LIVING LANGUAGE. Richmond Elementary School in southeast Portland plans to begin construction of a Japanese Garden at the entrance to the school this spring. The garden will be designed by renowned local landscape architect Sadafumi Uchiyama, who has two children attending the school. (AR Photo/Ian Blazina)

From The Asian Reporter, V18, #13 (March 25, 2008), page 15.

By Ian Blazina

Richmond Elementary School in southeast Portland plans to begin construction of a Japanese Garden at the entrance to the school this spring. The garden will be designed by renowned local landscape architect Sadafumi Uchiyama, who has two children attending the school.

The garden, which symbolizes the connection between Japan and Oregon and communicates Richmond’s educational priority as a Japanese cultural center for the greater Portland community, will serve as a living, interactive context for the students’ language and cultural learning. Students will be provided with a hands-on cultural experience by learning about the design, care, and maintenance of the garden environment.

The garden, along with a tea house and curriculum-based arts programs currently in development, is intended to stimulate cultural engagement between students, parents, and staff of the school and Portland’s extensive Japanese and Japanese-American communities, national immersion program alliances, international sister schools, and other community members interested in Japanese culture.

Uchiyama conceives the garden as an integral part of Richmond’s language and culture educational curriculum, providing the students with immediate experiences intimately related to the language they are absorbing. For instance, the Japanese word for ‘sour’ is directly related to the taste of Japanese plums, instantly bringing the specific flavor of the plums to mind.

"We wanted to use plant materials that have a very strong connection to Japanese words so students can appreciate how their spoken language has a real relation to the tastes and colors the words come from," said Uchiyama. "In this way, the students learn the philosophical and aesthetic underpinnings of the words, the fruits of the culture."

Uchiyama, a third-generation gardener whose family has been gardening since the Meiji Restoration period (1868-1912), noted that the garden is intended as a context for learning, leading the design to diverge from traditional Japanese gardens in response to the location of the site and the needs of the students. Because the garden is located in southeast Portland and meant to conceptually represent the bridge between Japan and the Pacific Northwest, part of the garden will contain regional materials, such as shore pines and Columbia basalt, instead of traditional Japanese plants and stone. And where material selection is guided primarily by aesthetic consideration in traditional Japanese gardens, the focus on the Richmond garden as a learning space also influenced the choice of materials, which will include tea camellias and a persimmon tree.

Richmond’s Japanese Immersion Program began in 1989 as a magnet program within Portland Public Schools. In 2005 the program expanded to the entire school, spurring a dramatic expansion that estimates enrollment to double by 2012. Richmond was rated an exceptional school by the Oregon Department of Education in 2006 and 2007, and received the Goldman Sachs Award for Excellence in International Education in 2005.

The school, located at 2276 S.E. 41st Avenue, has currently raised more than two-thirds of the funds needed to complete the garden. Donations can be made by contacting the Oya No Kai parent support group at <info@oyanokai.org> or visiting <www.oyanokai.org>. To learn more about Richmond School, visit <www.richmondjmp.org>.