The first design for a garden had stairs to the water and regular flower beds, in the style of the time of formal gardens around the house. Walter Beck was impressed by classical Chinese culture, especially by Wang Wei (王維) (698–761) who created scroll paintings and poems about gardens in the "Wang-ch'uan" cycle. Beck added numerous additional small gardens depicting individual scenes, called cup-gardens, using natural elements such as plants, rocks and streams for composed landscapes. Massive movement of hundreds of rocks was necessary for their creation. Streams and waterfalls were made possible by pumping water from the lake to a new reservoir above it.