Before the garden maker designs the garden he must thoroughly design the owner

"Before the garden maker designs the garden he must thoroughly design the owner. Unless the garden maker can keep the owner in check, the garden design will fail from the beginning. A garden maker who can't design an owner can't design a garden either."

--- Mirei Shigemori, master of the modern Japanese dry landscape garden, "Shinsakuteiki" in Shigemori Mirei Sakuhinshū: Niwa-Kamigami e no Apurōchi, cited in Christian Tschumi, Mirei Shigemori: Modernizing the Japanese Garden, Stone Bridge Press: 2005, p. 116, footnote 63.