"In a Japanese Garden"
By Lafcadio Hearn

"No effort to create an impossible or pure ideal landscape is made in the Japanese Garden.  Its artistic purpose is to copy faithfully the veritable landscape, and to convey the real impression that a real landscape communicates.  It is therefore at once a picture and a poem; perhaps even more a poem than a picture.  For as nature's scenery, in its varying aspects, affects us with sensations of joy or solemnity, of grimness or of sweetness, of force or of peace, so must the true reflection of it in the labor of the landscape gardener create not merely an impression of beauty, but a mood in the soul."

Excerpted from:
The Atlantic Monthly
Volume 70, Issue 417
July 1892

Mrs. Teruko von Bargen

Mrs. Teruko von Bargen, President of the Japan Club of New Orleans, attended the March 16, 2005 board meeting with a very welcome announcement.  She had solicited about 50 of her friends to financially support the JGSNO.  Mrs. Von Bargen presented Dr. Jack Strong with a check for more than $6,000 to help with construction costs.  We cannot thank her and her friends enough for this very generous contribution.