Featured Mizzou Botanic Garden
Point of Interest

Japanese Garden

Though it is known as the Japanese Garden, this water feature, is not maintained as one of Mizzou Botanic Garden’s themed gardens, but rather is considered a campus “point of interest”. Nestled between Stephens and Lefevre Halls, this pretty little pond was created in the 1920's from a spring north of one of the buildings, though an article in a 1994 “Mizzou Weekly” notes, “over the years construction in the area dried up that source of water.” The site originally included an arched bridge and an elaborate pagoda gate.

 

According to a December 1951 “Missouri Alumnus” magazine, it was “developed by Professor Horace Major, a member of the Horticultural faculty from 1912 to his death in 1944. The Tori [the gate] is the symbol of a shrine in Japan. The pond was used for years for biological purposes. Fatty Lewis (deceased) “Kansas City Star” columnist, named it “Lake Lefevre” in a feature article written several years ago.”

 

The “Mizzou Weekly” article notes “in the late 1980s, member[s] of the ground crew drained the pond, lined it with huge limestone boulders, dredged out decades worth of detritus, then capped the bottom with bentonite clay to prevent leaks.”

 

Native plants were introduced into the pond at that time in consultation with alumnus Jim Whitley, a “national expert on aquatic plants”, then working as the Missouri Department of Conservation’s head of fisheries research. Whitley donated plants from his own collection.

 

Water Lilies (Nymphaea), Pickerel Weed (Pontederia cordata), Copper Iris (Iris fulva) and Meadowsweet (Filipendula rubra). There are several native trees including River Birch (Betula nigra) and Kentucky Coffee Tree (Gymnocladus dioicus) which provide shade and make it a pleasant spot to visit in the warm summer months.

 

Japanese Stone Lantern

A bonified Japanese point of interest on the MU campus is the seven-foot tall Japanese stone lantern composed of five pieces of granite located, just outside the arched entry to the Journalism School, was a gift of the America-Japan Society of Tokyo. It was presented to the MU’s School of Journalism on November 9, 1926, by His Excellency, Tsuneo Matsudaira the Japanese ambassador to the United States. The lantern was taken from an old estate near the where Townsend Harris, the first American envoy to Japan, established his legation.

 

S. Uenoda, a Japanese newspaperman, wrote at the time, "No object in the realm of Japanese art is perhaps so enduring and at the same time so picturesque and artistic as the stone Iantern in the Japanese garden. Few objects of art in the course of their development have been so vitally associated with the mainstream of the ancient culture of this empire as that of the stone lantern."

 

In referring to the lantern as a gift to the University, Uenoda continued, "It was presented to the School of Journalism as a permanent memorial to the increasing good will and peace between the United States and Japan. The stone lantern as a token of good will and peace is most appropriate because of the fact that it is one of the most enduring and representative objects of art Japan has ever produced, and it is intended to illuminate darkness and shed light on ignorance."

 

The lantern was accepted by President Stratton D. Brooks, and on behalf of the Board of Curators, by H. J. Blanton, a member of the board and editor and publisher of the “Monroe County Appeal”, Paris, Mo.