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AS PROFOUND as a wisp of haiku verse, the tiniest Japanese stroll garden is designed to subtly lead visitors on a mini-journey toward enlightenment.
Every pebbled path and stepping stone, every weeping willow and grove of swaying bamboo, plays a part in the overall plan to immerse you so completely in nature that you become one with it - eventually discovering the not-so-fast track to inner peace.
And you thought this was going to be just another everyday walk in the woods.
"You are the garden while you're here - you're as natural a part of this garden as the bird that just landed in the tree above us, or the water, or the plants," explains curator Stephen Morrell on tours of the John P. Humes Japanese Stroll Garden in Mill Neck.
This unusual local refuge from the world was inspired by a 1960 visit to Japan's ancient capital of Kyoto by lawyer (and later ambassador to Austria) John P. Humes. As soon as he got home he hired a Japanese landscape gardener, and within four years a two-acre corner of his Long Island estate was transformed into an ink-brush landscape complete with an imported tea house. Humes' Japanese garden fell into disrepair while he was abroad on his diplomatic assignment but when he returned, in ill health himself, he engaged...