I Was Raised in a Japanese Nursery

“I started small. I try to create gardens that have meanings. I am a dilettante.”

Of the 31 garden areas that comprise Dr. Vincent T. Covello’s 20-acre garden, collectively named “Yugen,” that mean the most to him are: the Dancing Chinese Ladies, Jurassic Park, the Himalayan Birch Grove and of course, the mosses that cover a solid five acres on Long Island’s sandy soils.

For it was in the beginning, young Vincent created Japanese tray gardens.

Vincent was raised in a Japanese nursery, where his parents dropped him off every day to be watched by his aunt, assistant to the nursery’s owner who wrote the first published book on bonsai. Mr. Saihojo, the owner, liked Vincent and taught him to make little tray gardens of stone, moss, trees and water – the fundamental elements of Japanese gardens.

“In Japanese gardens, you start with rocks. He asked me to take the rocks and plant the trees, add a little river and cover any empty spaces with moss,” Covello says. It was a miniature tray landscape known as Boneki. It became a hobby for Vincent throughout his life.

Mr. Saihojo sent Vincent to Japan to study under a great master and the world’s leading expert on bonsai, Yugi Yoshimura. When he returned to the U.S., Vincent wrote The Japanese Art of Stone Appreciation: Suiseki and its Use with Bonsai, a bestselling book coauthored by him and Yugi Yoshimura, his mentor. “Respect for your teacher is the first and foremost key to education in the Japanese tradition,” he says.

When Covello bought the land for his country home on Long Island, his wife challenged him to convert the land into a life-size version of his tray landscapes. Thus the first garden, an inspirational garden, was created, thanks to Mr. Saihojo - and his wife. “To my amazement, the moss did very well,” he says.

Covello started collecting moss on his property, then transplanted five species of moss together that grew together. They thrived. When he planted a single species, they died. “Moss is a community,” he says. It took several plantings before all five species fruited and grew together when moved into habitat similar to their original homes – now under high-limbed oaks in moist shade. “Moss needs partial sun and if moved, it wants to move with its friends as part of its ecological system," Covello says. He spent a lot of money buying moss until he found the 80 species that grow best in his Long Island sandy soils. Regular maintenance consists of blowing leaves off the moss to allow moisture in and photosynthesis to occur plus an irrigation system.

He found he could walk on and trim the moss and even let it dry without damage. In fact, he conducts Wellness Walks in his moss garden. “It is helpful to people. Moss is very tranquil. It is the botanical equivalent of drugs that people take for depression,” he says.

Among the 15 unusual species in Covello’s “Jurassic Park,” subtropicals such as cycads and the threatened Wollemi Pine survive winter wrapped in burlap. The Wollemi Pine, Wollemia nobilis, found in Australia in 1994, was indigenous to the southern half of Pangea about 200,000 years ago. When Pangea broke up and land moved north separating from the South Pole, the Wollemi Pine and other “Antarctic Flora” moved with it. They now inhabit the southern hemisphere.

Five years ago, seedlings of this primitive plant were sent to devotees of unusual plants including Covello and the Queen of England. Covello’s Wollemi Pines are 20 feet tall now. “They’re fossil plants, thought to be wonders of the botanical world. These dinosaur plants have dinosaur qualities and grow fast," he says.