Takeo Shiota

Who was Takeo Shiota?

Takeo Shiota was a Japanese-American landscape architect, best known for his design of the Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.

Shiota was born about 40 miles outside of Tokyo, and came to the United States at the age of 26. The design of the Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, dates from 1914. It stands as the prototype for a popular genre, the first Japanese garden to be created in an American public garden. Shiota's design blended the ancient hill-and-pond style and the stroll-garden style of the Azuchi–Momoyama period, in which various landscape features are gradually revealed along winding paths. Its 3 acres contain hills, a waterfall, a pond, and an island, all artificially constructed, with wooden bridges, stone lanterns, a viewing pavilion, a torii, and formerly a Shinto shrine.

Shiota's work also includes:

one of the four gardens at the Sister Mary Grace Burns Arboretum in Lakewood Township, New Jersey

a Japanese garden at the Walter Kroll house, "Sho-Chiku-Bai", in Tuxedo Park, New York, for architects Walker & Gillette, c. 1912