Aquascaping Styles: Nature, Iwagumi, Dutch

Aquascaping is the practice of arranging plants and hardscape as a composition rather than as a collection. Three styles dominate: Nature, Iwagumi and Dutch. They are not variations on a theme — they are three different answers to the question of what the viewer should be looking at.

Nature aquarium: the illusion of a landscape

The Nature style, popularised by Takashi Amano, uses wood and stone to build a miniature landscape and plants to make it read as vegetation rather than as a planting scheme. The composition implies terrain — a hillside, a forest edge, a valley — and the plants are grouped in masses that suggest natural colonies.

The defining tool is the golden ratio. The focal point sits roughly at one-third or two-thirds across the tank, not in the centre, and the massing of plants builds toward it. Open space — the substrate left bare — is as important as the planted areas, because it gives the eye somewhere to rest.

• Hardscape: branching wood and stone in a dominant, secondary and tertiary arrangement
• Plants: mixed species in distinct masses, with epiphytes on the wood
• Depth: strong — achieved by a sloped substrate and by reducing plant size toward the back
• Demands: high light and CO₂ to keep the massed plantings dense and compact

Iwagumi: stone, and almost nothing else

Iwagumi is the most reductive of the three. The composition is stone. Plants are limited to a single carpeting species covering the substrate, and often nothing else at all. There is no wood, and the whole layout stands or falls on the arrangement of three to seven stones.

The classic formation uses three stones: the Oyaishi, the largest, placed off-centre; the Fukuishi, a supporting stone of similar character placed alongside; and the Soeishi, a smaller stone leaning in the same direction. All three should share a bedding angle, as though they were part of one geological formation.

Dutch: plants as the subject

Dutch style is the oldest of the three and the opposite of Iwagumi in every respect. There is no hardscape visible at all — no wood, no stone. The entire composition is plants, arranged in distinct groups, each of a different leaf shape and colour, in a garden-like formation.

The rules are strict. Plant groups are placed as though viewed from above, in rows that recede. No two adjacent groups may have the same leaf shape, and no plant may be used in more than one place. Colour is used for contrast: a red stem plant beside a green one, a fine-leaved plant beside a broad one.

Which one should you build

Match the style to the tank you have, not the other way round. Footprint matters more than volume: Iwagumi needs width to place three stones with space between them, and a tall narrow tank cannot do it. Dutch needs width too, because the receding rows are read across the front. Nature is the most forgiving of an awkward footprint because the wood can build depth upward.

The rules that apply to all three

• Plant densely from day one. A sparse planting leaves substrate, light and nutrients for algae. It looks worse and it performs worse.
• Keep the substrate line visible somewhere. A tank planted to every edge has no foreground and reads as flat.
• Group plants in odd numbers and in masses. Three clumps of five reads as a colony; five clumps of three reads as scattered.
• Leave the front glass clear. A carpet that runs to the glass eliminates the sense of depth the slope was created for.