Hi Rosemary!

There are many-many excellent books, check it out in the library, but these are very good and you can order from Amazon.com

Kiyoshi Seike : A Japanese Touch for Your Garden
Masanobu Kudo
David H. Engel

Ortho Books : All about Creating Japanese Gardens

Peter Chan : Creating a Japanese Garden

Sunniva Harte : Zen Gardening

Have fun, Andrea

I've seldom seen nice japanese gardens created all at once. I've been working on my entire yard over the past 8 years doing a little at a time, bit by bit. It's more fun that way and becomes an ongoing labor of love with well though out pieces instead of the "one of everything" school of Japanese Gardens

One more thought, bamboo is a really tough plant to control and maintain. Try putting some in the wiskey barrel planters that they sell at nurserys. This way they can be moved around at will.

There's a very good book that has info on many famous Japanese gardens (in Japan), it's called Japanese Gardens:Design and Meaning but I can't remember who wrote it. It's very good, it has site plans and cross-sections for all of the gardens, pictures (mainly black-and-white as it is quite old) and also design interpretation and such. A very good book.

-Audric

My "mostest favoritest" source for this is the section on design in Japanese Garden Design by Marc P. Keane. He addresses many of the questions of purpose and authenticity that have come up in this forum as well.