Traditional
Gardens in Bali
Traditional Balinese gardens are not what someone familiar with European. Middie-Lastern, Indian, Chinese or Japanese gardens might expect. They are generally quite spare, consisting of one or two trees and a lot of open space-packed earth swept bare-with a few flowers around. Often the trees are off to one side, some-times in pots, and have staghorns growing on them, with perhaps one or two polled flowering plants added for decoration.
The guiding aesthetic principle of traditional Balinese gardens is a variation on the contrast between overcrowded abundance (rame) and empty stillness (sepi). A few decades ago, most gardens on the island tended more towards the sepi side, in the style mentioned above, with perhaps the odd Croton or Coleus added for colour. In more recent years, the rame and of the spectrum has come into favour, featuring a profusion of brightly-coloured plants.
Venerable Temple Trees
The Banyan tree, called Binyin or Waringin in Balinese, is an old tree with multiple trunks and aerial roots hanging down like thick hair, that is an important landmark at certain well-delined places in Bali. Banyans grow at major crossroads and in front of important village temples. And no traditional palace should be without one in its forecourt. These glorious and powerful trees are a stupendous sight and can be seen for miles away. Not only that, but they are a favourite haunt of invisible spirits. A range of ferns or other plants grow from the nooks and crannies created by their acrial roots, which also make ideal places for children and monkeys to jemp in and out of.
Besides the mystical associations of the Waringin, many other trees found is or next to temples share in the potency of site which caused a temple to be built there in the first place. Stories of the foundiag of temples often have it that the invisible forces around a particular tree lead to the establishment of a temple in which offerings are made to them.
In a number of legends from Bali and elsewhere in Indonesia,the Nagasari (Messua Jerrea) tree is linked to temples and to the divine.Ancient Javanese temples in particular have these beautiful trees growing abundantly.
Another tree with particular temple associations is the huge Kepuh (Stepculia factida), whose bare limbs and desolate appearance make it particularly suitedto graveyards and temples associated with deach and the fearsome goddess Durga, the context in which most Balinese place this tree. Graveyards can often be recognised from a distance by the silhouette of the impressive Kepuh. In special puppet of its own, the Kepuh is shown hung with entrails, with scores of carrion birds perching on its limbs, and all kinds of demonic and destructive forms hovering about it.
Garden Temples
Gardens are not an inegrat part of most Balinese temples, none-theless there are a number of garden temples on Bali. The most famous of these is Pura Taman Ayun, part of the farmer capital of the kingdom of Mengwi, sited just to the east of the royal palace.
Its garden (taman) aspect is mainly indicated by the fact that it is surrounded by a moat. This is of course true of most other royal gardaen temples, which have few trees growing in them, but whose ponds or cana`s represent the oceans of the Hindu cosmos, and thus convey on them a special status. The house shrine of the palace of Kesiman is another example of this garden temple design, with its special pond and giant kulkul tower. These gardens all represent pleasure, but pleasure which uniters the divine forces and the royal ancestors who are commemorated in such temples. The intermediaries in this communion are the divine nymphs who are associated with all such gardens and bathing places. And the association is furthered by the presence of sacred pink, white and blue lotus flowers floating in the ponds, where nymphs and deities like to take their rest.
Some legends regarding the construction of Pura Taman Ayun claim that the architect was a Chinese whose great knowledge and prowess was a threat which needed to be harnessed by the king. Such stories may point to Chinese aesthetic influences in the layout of the garden. This would not be uncommon in Bali, as the main palace in the farmer capital of Karangasem has a Chinese built pavilion near its main pond. The Gianyar palace also has two lychee trees in one of its courtyards, said to be gifts from the Chinese merchants of the town.
Palace Gardens: The Royal Prerogative
Before the Dutch conquest of Bali, only kings had gardens. This is why even garden temples are associated with the royal ancestors, or in other words deceased kings, and their palaces. Even in more recent times, when the renowned architect-builder Mangku Cedet built his garden down by the Unda River in Klungkung. He had to first ask royal permission.
These royal gardens were constructed along the same basic lines as garden temples, consisting of pavilions with ponds in or around them, and a few trees. Fountains and water spouts carved in the form of snakes, elephants or demons were a common feature of the water works. In some old texts there are descriptions of “forest gardens” which were meant to be forest situated inside palaces, again with cosmological significance. In one classical text, the newly married King Kresna and his wife, Rukmini, wander in the garden of the king`s palace. As the following extracts show, these royal gardens are pervaded with all the pleasures of the senses : music, the humming of bees, the beauties of art and nature, all kinds of fragrances and, most of all, the sexual pleasures which follow on from this
They went everywhere-to quiet places,
Walking or playing hide and seek,
Or looking for a Pandanus flower to lead them
To the pleasures of the sleeping pavilion.
Everything in the little forest was full of beauty
From a cave in the hill, water flowed down and became a creek;
On both sides stones and sand were marvelously arranged;
The sands were fragrant from the Surabhi flowers as if greeting them.
The water of the river flowed pure like a woman;
Quick as a thought Kuluma fishes swam to the side;
The red-shelled snails followed each other unerringly;
Moving slowly as they stretched them, selves out to go.
There was a pleasant shirine-lower with tall fountains and clear water,
Beside a pond which was like a lake full of all kinds of flowers;
The branches of asokas and punnagas rubbed and touched each other
Their roots packed lightly together like the passionate embrace of lovers
The creeping Pandanus on the side of the lake looked exquisite,
The leaf sears on its trunk made it look as if had just taken off its waist cloth,
Two of its flowers lay on either side of rock,
Giving rise to passionate yearnings in their resemblance,
To the calves of a girl taken on the lap of her lover.
The garden was like a concubine next to the queen,
The buzzing of the bees was her crying and sobbing,
A caterpillar hung unseen on the caves, neglected;
The ants in the pond were pitiable as they fell in crocodile holes.
At the east side was the resting pavilion meant for quiet and isolation,
The Andul flowers spread thickly and widely over the path,
The beauty of the walled Tanjung tree was imposing,
Its flowers falling to the ground aroused passion,
In the hearts of the one who were going to he down there.
The layout of palaces
Balinese kings and princes built their palaces in accordance with classical Hindu-Javanese models, striving to imitate the capitals of the great Javanese kingdoms of old, such as Majapahit. Such palaces were meant to model the cosmos on a miniature scale and therefore contained collections of everything in the universe all kinds of animals, bird, people and plants. Palaces were where the human representatives of the kingdom came together, especially the wives of the ruler, who were daughter of other kings, lords and leading subjects from all parts of the kingdom. Early travelers recount how Balinese kings collected dwarves, albinos, foreigners, snakes, tiger, monitor lizard and many other rarities in their palaces.
Before the palace lay the great crossroads, site of a market where all the products of the kingdom were bought and sold. People came from all parts of the kingdom to trade here, the women doing the business while their husband squandered the family income in the nearby cockfighting hall. The king exacted a tax on both activities.
Balinese palaces consisted of a number of walled compounds joined together. Some of the main buildings in these compounds were large and imposing, but in general it was only their grander scale which distinguished them from ordinary house yards, as in terms of basic layout and construction they were quite similar. The gardens within these palaces were walled portions of natural foliage that served a rather special function in the classical Balinese-Javanese tradition, symbolically joining the sacred mountain, symbolized by pointed temple shrines or peaked roofs of the palace pavilions, with the sea, symbolized by moats and ponds. In other words, the garden represented the world that lay between these two extremes.
The garden was but one part of the Balinese royal palace. The majority or is was made up of sleeping compounds for the king and his second ruler (usually the crown princes or the king's brother, the main wives, the concubines and the servants. Food preparation areas, rice barns, the treasury and the arsenal made up the rest of the palace. Each sleeping area was named after a distant country a great kingdom or an object of great beauty.
A feature common to all palaces was the forecourt, called the bancingah, where the king held audience with commoners and where special pavilions were set aside for grand courtly theatrical performances of gambuh dance-drama. At the rear of this courtyard, Rising over the whole palace, was a great gate marking the space beyond which ordinary subjects could not enter. Beyond the forecourt was a ceremonial courtyard, which was particularly important for the life and death rituals of the royal family. Near it was an important shrine dedicated to the royal ancestors, which usually had n offering area in front of it.
Priestly Privilege
The only other people besides kings who could have formal gardens were priests. Their houses, called geria, had gardens which were designed for meditation; some were even called geria taman. Most have collections of plants which are placed there for their decorative flowers, perhaps closer to the western idea of a private garden than the royal ponds. In the eastern part of island, common people did not grow any decorative plants in their house compounds at all until receantly. In other areas, only a few shrubs were grown. A walled compound consisted of a set of pavilions and buildings with the vard swept clean.
The "Floating Pavilions" at Klungkung
Bali's greatest palace gardens almost invariably featured a bale kambang of "floating pavilion", an artificial island with a pavilion standing on it, surrounded by a moat or artificial lake. The best remaining example stands in the former palace of the king of Klungkung. Situated near the main crossroads of the town now called Sraarapura, this palace belonged to the most important of Bali's traditional rulers, but was largely devastated in 1908 when the royal family marched to their deaths in ritual suicide against the guns of invading Dutch forces.
The palace once exended 250 metres further to the south of the presents pavilions, and in front of it was an open field planted with a single massive Banyan tree. This tree was unwisely occording to Klungkung residents cut down in the 1970s to make way for a restaurant, which failed miserably. The side is now occupied by a rather menacing monument to the former kings, but with the loss of the tree, many locals believe that the royal family lost much of their influence.
The pleasure garden of the Klungkung palace once featured an artificial hill, but the focal point was the lotus pond with pavilion in the middle. The pavilion now standing in the pond is not the original one this has been relocated is based for ceremonies in the new palace, constructed nearby in the in the 1950s, but a larger replacement. In the 1940s, the new floating pavilion had its ceilings grandly painted by the famous Wayan Kayun , master artist from the nearby village of Kamasan. This painting linked in to the adjacent Court of Justice (Kerta Gosa), a pavilion with painted ceilings situated directly above the crossroads, which is a separate structure and not part of the royal garden.
The Denpasar Palace
The other palace which had a grand garden was the former puri of Denpasar, situated where the town square of Bali's capital is now located. Like the Klungkung palace, this was destroyed in a stand against the dutch in 1906. Built at the beginning of the 19th century, this great palace featured a large garden area in the courtyard next to the forecourt. This courtyard had a huge building called the "Pavilion of Beauty" where the king sleet. Another pavilion was set atop the palace wall, from which vantage point the king could watch his subjects. A central compex a four pleasure pavilions was entirely surrounded by water, the whole yard being called Narmada after the sacred river of India. The sleeping quarters of that king's principal wives adjoined this courtyard.
Another smaller garden was situated on the eastern side of thhe palace, near the sleeping quarters of the king, who died in featured lotus pondsyard a library and was called Saraswati after the good dess of learning.
Gianyar and Karangasem
Two of the best preserved traditional palacerved traditional palaces in Bali, both still occupied and featuring pleasure gardens, are found in Gianyar palace was rebailt substantiaily in the 1890s after devastating internal wars split the kingdom, and features a garden with symbolic mountain shrine and an adjacent walled ritual area to the north.
The old palace of eastern Balinese kingdom of Karangasem was built in the 17th century, as the dynasty expanded to become the most powerful on Bali, even conquering the western parts of neighbouring island of Lombok. The Rum or "Beauty " courtyard where the king once dwelt, and where a evil ruler was murdered in 1824, has a number of ponds and adjoins a garden with two ponds and floating pavilion which provided a place of rest and meditation for the ruler.
The king's greatest achievement, however, was the splendid pleasure garden at ujung, several kilometers south of the capital near the coast. Destroyed in he early 1980s by an earthquake, this garden consisted of sets of square ponds with central islands. The main pond had on its island, accessible by bridges, a large building built high above the water so as to cool its inhabitants with the afternoon breezes. Above all this stood a gazebo-like observation pavilion, while a variety of cosmological symbols set on the adjoining hills indicated how the garden was intended to represent the unity of all the elements of nature.
Palace Garden of Lombok
The grandest Balinese palace and gardens were not even located on Bali itself, but on neighbouring Lombok. The powerful Balinese king of that island, a descendant of the Karangasem dynasty, concuered the latter with his brothers in the early part of the 19th century. When he came to the throne, he expanded the palace at Cakranegara (now part of the capital,Mataram) into the largest of all Balinese palaces. This Palace was later destroyed in 1894 in a battle against the dutch, and what remains is only the huge Mayura (Peacock) garden, a vast pond with a floating pavilion in the middle (called the "golden Island") and a small temple with springs (now a swimming pool).
The king and other members of his family sponsored several garden temples, the most spectacular of which is, like the garden of the Denpasar Palace, called Narmada. The original garden was entirely caclosed by waals, and actually consisted of six gardens. One entered from the south and crossed the river into the main dwelling place of the king, a miniature palace consisting of a forecourt, ceremonial and cooking areas, and sleeping quarters, as well as small garden with twin ponds and observation pavilion which overlooked the main part of the garden. The king descended from his quarters to a lotus ponds whose central building housed a spring, then proceeded to the royal bathing are which had its own spring temple and large, adjoining pond.
The three Palaces of Karambitan
Karambian, in the western regency of Tabanan, is the traditional home of powerbrokers of the Tabanan dynasty and area full of surprises. It was once the home of kingmakers and a source of wives for kings all over Bali. Along with this power came wealth, and the three palaces of karambitan reflect this in their maintenace of traditional architectural forms and garden styles.
Here you find, in Puri Anyar and Puri Gede, some of the purest examples of traditional palace layout, original 1920s and1930s architecture, paintings for ceremonial pavilions, and a stupendous main shrine area, where the daring step of making ancestral images was first initiated by the late I gusti Ketut Sangka and his father, his I Gusti Gede Oka.
Indonesian Gardens In Bali
Very little of what might be called traditional Balinese gardening remains today, and indeed a major reshaping of the concept of gardens has taken place quite recently as the result of Indonesian policies. A number of a government policies have influenced domestic gardening, the first of which was a programmer to improve health conditions. The Balinese, along with other Indonesians, have been encouraged to diversify their diets and grow a wider variety of plants in their houseyards. These gardens area now filled with tomatoes, herbs, and a wealth of other plants originally introduced for the tourist industry. The government health programme has included the replacement of dusty, packed-earth countryards with grassed lawns and paved driveways that now obligatory in every home.
Few traditional Balinese house are left on the islands, and most older compoands feature concrete structures built in what is generally described as the modern Indonesian style. A rapid mecrease in prosperity resulting from tourism has prompted many Balinese to grow a variety of ornamental plants at home, and many of the ideas employed in tourist hotel and restourant gardens have been adopied here. A major indicator of this is a plants vendors by the side of the road near Sanur, which sprang up in the 1980s and have since made the use of Bauganvillea ubiquitous.
Colonial rule in Bali left lew gardening legacies beyond the laracandas and flamboyants planted near the Bali Hotel in Denpasar and along the roads in North Bali. However, the early 1990s ushered in a new versions of a European-style gardening. Hot on the heels of a new health progamme came a tamanisasi or “gardenisation” progamme which encouraged villagers to plants their own flowers beds. These beds were modelled on the colonial style gardens formerly planted in the hill stations of Java, but with tropical plants replacing the European ones which could only survive in cooler mountain areas.
The main aesthetic principle behind tamanisi was order-the replacement of messy and unkempt trees which shed their leaves (including some magnificent old banyan trees) by shrub and flowers beds planted in neatly-ordered rows arranged by height . Oddly painted concrete sculptures, some made from the stumps of arboreal victims of the scheme, completes the scenes which villagers were encouraged to place along the mains roads.
Tamanisasi has even influinced in the royal pleasure gardens. Thea gardens at Klungkung and Karambitan, for example, were rearranged and replanted to fit the prevailing taste. Ordered rows of shrubs and expanses of lawn are now a major feature, and liberal amounts of concrete were applied arrond the grounds, with the reghrettable resuit the many of the following, traditional lines have been replaced by square and harsh ones.
Tamanisasi is not the only influince on Balinese domestic gardening, and the Balinese are taking elements of the new progamme and the produci ng their own kinds of gardens. Locally owned hotels and restourants have producced some of the more interesting versions of traditional garden principles, such as the use of trees and vines and the “lotus pound as a garden” theme.
CONTEMPORARY BALINESE GARDENS
Picture of you will, one of those great, eternally green glasshouses so popular in Victorian England, but magically enlarged to such an extent that is capable of holding an entire island, volcanoes and all, with a plentiful supply of fertile soil and water from both sky and ever-flowings springs. Achieve such a feat of the imagination and the you will have a general idea of the dazzling range of possibilities that await any would-be gardener who sets outs to exercise his talent on Bali.
The extraordinary ease and speed with wich almost everything growsin such a setting means that gardens have always played a prominent role in Balinese life, wheter arranged to enhance the splendours of its palaces and temples or merely haphazard collections of bananas, coconut palms, spices and other practical plants arond the homes of ordinary people. The Dutch added different landscapes concept during they half-century of colonial rule over the islands, while still other came in the early years of tourism. The greatest number of gardens, certainly the most impressive in terms of design and plant material, have been established only within the past few decades and reflect a whole new era in horticultural development.
Those responsibles for these contemporary gardens represent an assortment of nationalities. Balinese have drawn their intimate knowledge of local conditions to create many either for their own use or for outsiders less skiled. Residents of neighbourring Java or from nearby countries with similiar climates have also found fresh sources of inspiration on the island. Others have come from much more distant places and been stirred by perhaps unexpected urge to express themselves through the medium of plants.
Despite its relatively small size, Bali’s striking differences in climate and topography present the gardener with a wide range of possibilities. The hilly countryside around Ubud for instance, with its steep ravines and meandering streams, offers an opportunity for dramatic multi-level plantings and view of breathmaking beauty. At still higher elevations on the rich slopes on the islands looming volcanoes, where temperatures drop much lower than in the lowlands, it is possible to have a European garden of roses, azaleas and fresh strawberries, though without having to contend with the long months of winter bleakness. Along some parts of the shore, at such popular beach resorts as Sanur and Kuta, monsoon rains bring a steamy atmosphere of fecundity that encour Ages mini-jungles to grow almost overnight, other coastal areas like nusa dua, on the other hand, are notably dry and demand a different sort of gardening approach.
Individual tastes indesign also vary. Some seek to emulate the rather formal patterns ofa traditional Balinese arrangement, making use of water, courtyard, statuary and limited number of strategically placed plants. Other prefer a more “natural” effect, in wich the gardens merges with the surrounding country sides so that is difficult to discern where one stops and the other begins, this is particularly popular in the hill country, where features like Bali’s celebrated rice terraces are sufficiently spectacular not to require much embellishment.
Perhaps the majority of those who come from less hospitable climates, however, are so stimulated by their discovery of so much sheer botanical exuberance, and by what the 19th-century trveler Isabella Bird called “all the promise of perpetual spring and the fulfillment of endles summer” that they are tempted to produce theatrical settings of maximum tropic luxuriance with huge, decorative leaves, brilliant flowers and tangled creepers crowding close and often in to the buildings they adorn.
Thanks not only to such hospitable growing conditions but also tothe comparative ease with wich plants can now bemoved over great distance, Balinese gardens today display much more variety than in the past. New ornamentals are cosntantly being introduced by individuals collectors, more often than not through landscapes like those shown on the following pages, for a rainy season or two they take of pride of place, admired as rare specimens ina private garden or as part of the landscapes created for a resort hotel, and then assuming they flourish-as they nearly always do-they become part of the plant material available to all.
Thus the possibilities multiply, thus the already magical gardens of Bali acquire an added richness to inspire future generations who fall under their spell.
Di samping untuk menghormati jasa para pejuang, patung-patung itu sekaligus menjadi identitas Denpasar sebagai ibukota Propinsi Bali. Masuk Denpasar dari utara, di persimpangan Jalan Gatot Subroto dan Cokroaminoto, berdiri patung Mayor I Gusti Bagus Sugianyar. Patung ini dibangun pada 4 Agustus 1994 ini. Lalu, ada patung Kapten Cokorda Agung Tresna di persimpangan Jalan Gatot Subroto dan Nangka, dibangun pada 31 Desember 1993. Sementara patung Letnan Ida Bagus Putu Djapa, dibangun 20 November 1996, terletak di persimpangan Jalan Raya Puputan dan Hayam Wuruk.
