Mark Bourne creates gardens which combine his passion for local beauty with his extensive knowledge of Japanese design.

Mark has the distinction of successfully completing a full-length traditional apprenticeship in Japanese garden design - the same type of rigorous, hands-on training expected of master Japanese designers. Living in Kyoto for four years as an apprentice to one of Japan’s top designers, Mark was actively involved in the creation of new gardens and the maintenance of a number of Japan’s greatest classical gardens. His training included work on new gardens at Kodai-ji Zen Temple, the construction of the Japanese Garden in Florence, Italy, and pruning at the Kyoto Imperial Palace and the Katsura Detached Palace. He also worked at a number of other Zen temples, private residences, and public gardens as an apprentice.

Mark began to pursue his passion for Japanese aesthetics as an undergraduate at the University of California at Davis, receiving a Bachelor of Arts Magna cum Laude in Cultural Anthropology and Japanese. The combination of fluency in Japanese, cultural immersion, and an academic foundation give Mark the ability to understand Japanese design from both an American and a Japanese perspective, allowing him to comfortably blend age-old aesthetic traditions with modern ideas and local materials, without sacrificing the integrity of the art.

Since 1999 Mark has been designing and building gardens in the San Francisco Bay Area. Mark's clients have requested gardens ranging from the local expression of classical Japanese themes, to explorations of the beauty of native plants in a California garden setting.