Shaping trees and shrubs, topiary and grooming rampant junipers are simple techniques most often overlooked when seeking comfort, privacy or front door curb appeal. Management of plant material will showcase, emphasize de-emphasize or screen homes. Every opportunity exists to bring the patterned rhythmic warmth of the west coast to Calgary and other locales across the Canadian Prairies.

A small yet significant historical insight into our accepted ideas of maintenance:  In 1938 there were 138 gardeners of Japanese origin working in the Kitsilano suburb of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

And most of us know how small Kits is to the rest of Greater Vancouver.

Today, there are less than 50 active Japanese gardeners in the entire Greater Vancouver area.    

(if you reside on the west coast, for more information please visit Vancouver Japanese Gardeners Association: http://members.shaw.ca/vjga/)

That warmly familiar west coast greenery, Vancouver’s landmark ‘green style’ was shaped by Japanese gardeners using Japanese garden techniques. What we see is still an adherence to the 12th C text, the Sakuteiki, wherein the advice that “one should adhere to the conditions of the site” for the most efficient use of material.

              and also the second admonition to

‘listen to the clients needs and wants‘    

 

as the greenery use and direction came from the predominantly English employers seeking familiar landscape inter-relationships. Yet, the pruning techniques of English hedges and topiary already existed in Asia, both in bonsai and in topiary.

The origin is perhaps unimportant, however the wishes of the client are, and the understanding of what is possible as a maintenance strategy for that site, for the client and for their budget.

Occasionally in the Pre-war and Internment years, requests for hybridized postcard Japanese gardens were also asked for.

This created a ‘vaguely familiar yet unique’ synthesis of ‘Japanese gardens’ with familiar hedges, trees, shrubs and ground-cover of the English landscape designed by westerners and realized through Japanese gardeners. The result has been the North American vernacular of the Japanese “style” garden.

In regard to the etymology of the ‘Japanese garden’ these ‘style’ gardens, in my experience, were nothing new even though they opened a new opportunity for adapting non-Japanese western materials, into the composition that is the Japanese garden. To clarify: topiary has always been part of the pantheon of Japanese design through bonsai, and, geometric form of plant material had already been used to signify various abstract thoughts that enhanced the gardens understanding for the viewer.

This should then be understood that ‘western style’ had already been incorporated into the gardens of Japan as the ‘westernized’ Japanese garden, as compared to the Japanese garden that followed the ‘naturalized or natural order’ of the organization of nature adapted to the use-ability of mankind. The Japanese garden has always been in western terms: Landscape + Architecture = Japanese garden.

This culminates in the popularly understood description of the ‘modern Japanese garden’ (rather than style) as the synonymous idea of Japanese techniques adapted to ‘the way people live harmoniously with nature and architecture’ in a warmer and less harsh environment. Of course the western seaboard also conveys the idea to us in the prairies of ‘west-coast green’ as a hallmark of what is wonderful to grow and how to grow this greenery.

The entire western seaboard has benefited from Japanese garden techniques developed in Japan shaping our landscape and increasing the demand for this distinctively rich blend of aesthetically manicured greenery that is the envy of dryer and harsher climes.

For more information in print about North America’s Japanese history please see: Greenmakers,

-and visit the Japanese Canadian National Museum: http://www.jcnm.ca

What this means to you, our client, is that the ‘familiar to you from the west coast’ is that landscape maintenance & development is available through our green services as well as refined Japanese garden design, installation and maintenance.

Qualified maintenance excellence knows where a plant should grow to within the site or where it should be reduced too, how this plant fits into the overall design to maximize the clients needs. This Right Tree/Right Place + Right Size decision refers to ‘development’ within the services of garden Maintenance.

In other words maintenance is the art of keeping (maintaining) a degree of tidiness with aesthetic artistry to an area as a constant, and, development maintains or implies improving standards already established in ground-cover, shrub or tree growth, health or aesthetic.

Most gardeners start with ‘maintaining’ ‘keeping the same’ as a training vehicle for apprentice gardeners to understand how to prune without allowing altering the pattern of the tree.

This eventually migrates to trees and shrubs needing development to ensure through experience what plants work well in that landscape by structuring how the original composition best develops the landscape to its most fulfilling form for the client. The key to good development is the ability to read what the previous pruning indicates what should be done next to continue to bring a composition to fruition. If the experience to read these tell-tales is not available, then the landscape is constantly changing ‘Author’s’ and the result is layers of individual thought that eventually becomes visual chaos because a definitive thematic composition can not be achieved.

Following the Author’s Intent is the key to developing a landscapes conceptual success for the clients benefit. It is vital, critical for a ‘best result’ that understanding the garden, and each plants purpose  is understood before a single stem is cut.

From applying decades of arboriculture experience, design installation with development of garden spaces, and after consultation with the client, Fuzei Gardens & Tree Service Ltd. understands how a plant within a landscape will best function for the clients needs.

Having a firm grounding and long understanding of the Japanese garden and its cultural methods of pruning, alongside bonsai experience makes topiary & espalier a reflexive cultivation technique.

fuzei gardens & tree service ltd.      +  403 . 931.3817           edzard@fuzei.com

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