It is quite something to experience a beautifully designed Japanese garden. An important stillness descends, not quite silence but very quiet, an impression of order that never feels oppressive, and, if you think about it, an uncanny feeling that everything – every pebble, every shrub, every carefully raked wave in the gravel – is in precisely the place it was destined to be. Creating that feeling is one of the most difficult and subtle forms of design in the world. Here are a few lessons we might borrow.

The first is restraint. Japanese garden design is an exercise in what you leave out, being as important as what you put in. We tend to fill up space: another border, another feature, another plant, because there’s room and it seemed nice at the garden centre. Japanese design starts from the opposite position. Every plant, every statue, every lump in the path has to earn its place, and the negative space around them is as carefully thought-out as the foreground. For advice from Landscapers Gloucester, contact //phoenixgardenersgloucester.co.uk/services/landscaping

And then there’s intention. Nothing in a Japanese garden happens by accident. The view from a particular window is considered. The path curves at a particular point to reveal something – a statue, say – gradually rather than all at once. The reflection in the pond is planned. This kind of deliberateness about how a space is used – not just how it looks in a photograph – is something British garden design has traditionally been less thorough about.

Finally, there’s the question of rocks. The Japanese have a philosophy – I am told – that takes years to understand properly, about the correct placement of rocks in a garden. We tend to just put them near the pond. The lesson isn’t to build a Japanese garden in Shropshire. It’s to bring that same quality of intention to whatever garden you’re actually creating.