With regard to the interesting article on Chinese Gardens, I have the following questions.

Concerning the beginning of gardening during the Shang and Zou dynasties, you mention that also the growing of chrysanthemums were involved. Do you think this was for ornamental purposes and enjoyment of the flowers, and/ or because of medicinal reasons, and use for tea?
In China herbs were used for medicinal reasons, and probably mostly gathered from the wild. So it seems that the emperors and aristocrats liked to have chrysanthemums in their garden as an ornamental?

I am interested in the origin and spreading of the (cultivated) chrysanthemum. The cultivated chrysanthemum has bigger flowers and longer stems than the wild ones; the first is called Chrysanthemum x morifolium which is a hybrid between several different wild species, and the latter could be Chrysanthemum coronarium (for eating as salad), C. indicum, C. vestitum, etc. Experts think that the C. x morifolium (florists chrysanthemum) emerged some sixteen centuries ago in China.
So, I wonder whether you can prove by literature that these types already were cultivated in the Shang and Zhou era, this would be new !

I know that in the Classic of Rites the chrysanthemum was used in poems, but I think this concerns wild chrysanthemums, like the C. indicum with yellow, simple flowers.

In horticultural literature, the spreading of the cultivated chrysanthemums from China, to Korea and Japan from ca. 500 AD onwards, is usually connected to Buddhist monks. But I cannot find a reference in which it is described that the monks cultivated them; perhaps they did because of making tea. In Buddhism the chrysanthemum is not a holy flower like the lotus. But the Japanese emperors from Nintoku like to have them in their temple gardens, and decoration, also as emblem or crest (16-petaled chrysanthemum flower). Besides the Buddhists, there were also contacts between the imperial Chinese and Japanese courts. And moreover, it seems that in those 5th and 6th centuries AD there was a flow of people from Korea to Japan, who went to work as craftsmen, etc.
Do you know a Chinese source in which the growing of chrysanthemum was practised in China by Buddhist monks, and why? The monks are said to have had much knowledge, also about agriculture, which they are supposed to have introduced to Japan. All this, is interesting, but perhaps it concerns nice stories, but they have to be ascertained.

So, several questions to be answered. I hope you can help me to find reliable sources.