Takeo Shiota was a Japanese-American landscape architect, best known for his design of the Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden

Brooklyn Botanic Garden

Brooklyn Botanic Garden is a botanical garden in the borough of Brooklyn in New York City. Located near the Prospect Heights, Crown Heights, and Park Slope neighborhoods, the garden includes a number of specialty "gardens within the Garden," plant collections, and the Steinhardt Conservatory,...

.

Shiota was born about 40 miles (60 km) outside of Tokyo, and came to the United States at the age of 26. The design of the Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden

Brooklyn Botanic Garden

Brooklyn Botanic Garden is a botanical garden in the borough of Brooklyn in New York City. Located near the Prospect Heights, Crown Heights, and Park Slope neighborhoods, the garden includes a number of specialty "gardens within the Garden," plant collections, and the Steinhardt Conservatory,...

, dates from 1914. It stands as the prototype for a popular genre, the first Japanese garden

Japanese garden

, that is, gardens in traditional Japanese style, can be found at private homes, in neighborhood or city parks, and at historical landmarks such as Buddhist temples, Shinto shrines and old castles....

 to be created in an American public garden. Shiota's design blended the ancient hill-and-pond style and the stroll-garden style of the Azuchi–Momoyama period, in which various landscape features are gradually revealed along winding paths. Its 3 acres (1.2 ha) contain hills, a waterfall, a pond, and an island, all artificially constructed, with wooden bridges, stone lanterns, a viewing pavilion, a torii

Torii

A is a traditional Japanese gate most commonly found at the entrance of or within a Shinto shrine, where it symbolically marks the transition from the profane to the sacred...

, and formerly a Shinto

Shinto

or Shintoism, also kami-no-michi, is the indigenous spirituality of Japan and the Japanese people. It is a set of practices, to be carried out diligently, to establish a connection between present day Japan and its ancient past. Shinto practices were first recorded and codified in the written...

 shrine (razed by an arsonist in 1937).

Shiota's work also includes:

• one of the four gardens at the Sister Mary Grace Burns Arboretum
  Sister Mary Grace Burns Arboretum
  The Sister Mary Grace Burns Arboretum, on the campus of Georgian Court University, in Lakewood Township, New Jersey, USA, was once the landscaped park for the winter home of George Jay Gould, millionaire son of railroad tycoon Jay Gould....
  
   in Lakewood Township
  Lakewood Township
  Lakewood Township may refer to:* Lakewood, New Jersey* Lakewood Township, New Jersey* Lakewood Township, St. Louis County, Minnesota* Lakewood Township, Lake of the Woods County, Minnesota...
  
  , New Jersey
  New Jersey
  New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...
  
   (originally commissioned by George Jay Gould I
  George Jay Gould I
  George Jay Gould I was a financier and the son of Jay Gould. He was himself a railroad executive, leading both the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad and the Western Pacific Railroad ....
  
  , and now part of Georgian Court University
  Georgian Court University
  Georgian Court University is a private Roman Catholic university located in Lakewood in Central New Jersey. The university is operated by the Sisters of Mercy...
  
  )
• a Japanese garden at the Walter Kroll house, "Sho-Chiku-Bai", in Tuxedo Park, New York
  Tuxedo Park, New York
  Tuxedo Park is a village in Orange County, New York, United States. The population was 731 at the 2000 census. It is part of the Poughkeepsie–Newburgh–Middletown, NY Metropolitan Statistical Area as well as the larger New York–Newark–Bridgeport, NY-NJ-CT-PA Combined...
  
  , for architects Walker & Gillette
  Walker & Gillette
  Walker & Gillette was an architectural firm based in New York City, the partnership of A. Stewart Walker and Leon N. Gillette , active from 1906 through 1945.- Biography :...
  
  , circa 1912
• the rooftop North Garden at the Astor Hotel
  Astor Hotel
  The Hotel Astor was a hotel located in the Times Square area of Manhattan, in operation from 1904 through 1967. The former site of the hotel, the block bounded by Broadway, Astor Plaza, West 44th Street, and West 45th Street, is now occupied by the high-rise 54-story office tower One Astor Plaza.-...
  
  

He was also the author of The miniature Japanese landscape: a short description in 1915. In the 1920s he formed a partnership with Thomas S. Rockrise (born Iwahiko Tsumanuma, ? - 1936) and conducted business from 366 Fifth Avenue.

Shiota died in an internment camp in South Carolina.