Each entry not only has the necessary information
for successful garden culture and good
design choices, but also includes fascinating
reading about traditional uses in Japanese
culture. For example, Lycoris radiata (higan bana
in Japanese or spider lily in English) is “rarely
planted in gardens because the red flowers
remind people of the dead. However this flower is
frequently found growing around Shinto shrines
and Buddhist temples.”
Maintaining a Japanese-Style Garden
Jake Hobson is another European author who
moved to Japan. Although now returned to his
native England, he writes “Niwaki: Pruning,
Training and Shaping Trees the Japanese Way”
from his experience in Japan, including working
at an Osaka nursery.
“The reliance on trees and plants is no
different from most other gardening cultures in
the world, climate permitting. What is different,
however, is how the trees look.” These trees, or
niwaki in Japanese, are “pruned to fit into the
landscape of the garden in a way that is peculiar
to Japan.”
Hobson thinks these practices can be adapted
for Western gardens, but counsels his readers
to not slavishly follow Japanese plant selection.
Instead, he urges the gardener to apply the
Japanese level of intensity in the care of garden
trees using species that flourish locally.
The author summarizes this intensity as
an effort to create a “character of maturity”
by “training and pruning branches to give the
impression that they are larger and older than
they actually are.” He then relates these practices
to many of the Western traditions used on fruit
trees to increase yields. This requires consistent
and ongoing pruning.
To illustrate these concepts, Hobson relies
on mostly traditional Japanese garden trees
but with some English examples. I came to the
conclusion that this style might not suit everyone’s
taste, but this book gives you an in-depth
introduction to the concepts and the process of
niwaki, and gave me a greater appreciation of
this approach to gardening.
Japanese Botanical Illustration
“Flora Japonica,” published by the Royal Botanic
Gardens, Kew in 2016, is really two books in
one. The first part provides a rarely documented
history of Japanese botany with an emphasis on
the literature and illustration of the native flora.
The oldest surviving example dates from 1274 and
surprisingly was intended to identify plants used
by veterinary surgeons. It is considered to be very
comparable to European works of the same era.
Botanical illustration flourished in the Edo
period (1603–1868), a time when Japan was
politically stable but closed to other cultures.
“Flora Japonica” includes many beautifully
reproduced examples of this era, again with
many parallels in style to European publications
of the same time period, despite very
limited interaction.
The second and main part of the book is a
celebration of botanical illustration by Japanese
artists of today. The nearly one hundred works
were originally commissioned for an exhibit
presented at Kew, “chosen to represent the
unique richness of the Japanese native flora and
the influence of Japanese plants on gardens in
the West.” These works are beautiful for their
artistry, and the extensive notes provide considerable
botanical and horticultural background
for the subjects.
Japanese Orchid Mania
Japanese horticulture is known for intense
specialization with certain plants; chrysanthemums
are an example. Less well known is a
more recent (almost 100-year-old) infatuation
with orchids. Much of this craze was due to one
man, Shotaro Kaga (1888–1954)—a banker by
trade, who established a major orchid nursery at
Oyamazaki, near Kyoto, in the 1920s.
Kaga hired a business partner who was skilled
at orchid cultivation, while he concentrated on
the promotion of the orchids grown and the
hybrids developed at Oyamazaki. For marketing,
he turned to the long-practiced Japanese
art of wood block printing. He was fortunate
to find a skilled artist, Zuigetsu Ikeda
(1877–1944), who created many watercolor
images that were the basis for these prints.
28 v Washington Park Arboretum Bulletin