The Lot & Garden
It looks a little different than it did in 2002. July 2004
The next project we tackled was the landscaping and garden once the septic system had been installed (see the House section for details). The house was essentially surrounded by mud at that time, and while some folks thought we were nuts for doing the garden first, I didn't want to live in a mud pit while trying to work on the house.
The basics of the lot are that it's a roughly 100 foot by 100 foot square lot with about a 30 foot change in elevation from the back of the house to the Northwest corner of the yard. The front of the lot faces South as does the hill in the back, so there's plenty of sun for the plants. The boundaries of the yard are defined by the street in front, a white picket fence on the East side, a landscape-block wall on the West, and a very old stone wall on the North. The house was built before there were zoning regulations governing set-backs from the lot lines, so it's only about 6 feet from the property line on the West, and about 15 feet from the front property line. As long as we don't change the foot print of the house, those set-backs remain valid so we get to enjoy a larger back and side yard than what we'd end up with if we tore the place down and started over. I think the photo below was taken either in late 2002, or early 2003.
A bird's eye view. Winter 2002?
Since the garden accounts for a significant portion of the renovation project, I've split it up into several sections that deal with different aspects of the garden construction. I've included some information here regarding how we got started with the initial landscaping and the irrigation system since those were among the earliest projects. The majority of the work that was done on the yard was undertaken while we were both still working full-time. We were also struggling with decisions about finding a general contractor for the house, what parts of the house we would start with, and working out the budget for that. With lots of things to consider at the time, doing some yard work was a welcome diversion.
Initial Landscaping
The original plan for the yard from the septic designer was to rebuild the hill that had been flattened out for the leach field and then bring in the hydroseed machine and make it all grass again. We put a stop to that idea rather quickly, and set about finding a landscaping contractor to get a layer of topsoil spread over the mud, re-arrange some rocks, then perform the excavation needed for the dry landscape area. We ended up with a friend of a neighbor who showed up with his Bobcat and mini-excavator and got right to work telling us what we were supposed to do with our yard. In a way I'm glad we started the project with a contractor rather than doing it ourselves, since we learned a lot about how to deal with contractors. We mostly learned we didn't want to deal with contractors any more.
It all seemed simple enough to me... spread the topsoil so the water runs down the hill in back, then around the house to the street out front. Dig down the area at the leach field and use the soil to build up the edges of that area. Then put down weed barrier fabric, fill the flat area with stone dust, then a top layer of white gravel. Flatten off a 12 by 12 foot square area in each corner of back yard, top with crushed stone and pack it so we can put sheds there. Finally, rearrange some rocks that we'd just sort of scattered around since we had to leave room for the big equipment to get in and out of the yard at the time.
In order to avoid a rather long rant, I'll just say I was relieved when we finally paid him and he went away. I've since moved by hand most of the rocks he moved with his machine. I've dug up by hand all of the gravel in the karensansui , moved it over, dug the base grade deeper, put the dug-out material around the edge to build up the banking, then put the gravel back down. I've re-graded and wheeled crushed stone by hand up to the shed locations before I could build the sheds, and we'll likely have to hire another contractor to properly grade the yard again before we can build a deck or patio out back. I figured out that if I want something done right, I have to do it myself. I can explain how I want something done to a contractor in great detail, but they still do exactly what they want to do, because they know better than the silly home owner. The fact that I'm giving them thousands of dollars has no bearing on their ability to consider what it is I want them to do - they just do it however they want so they can get on to the next job. Ok, I'm ranting. I must also add that I have found a few contractors that really do care about doing the job the way I want it done, but that seems the exception rather than the rule.
Irrigation
One of the problems with trying replicate the lush moss tea gardens of Japan is we don't enjoy the same extended rainy season here in New England (perhaps that's not such a bad thing). Even before we started transplanting moss and ferns into our garden, we realized the futility of trying to hand water the numerous shrubs and ground covers we'd planted the first year of the project. While the plants received plenty of sun throughout the day for vigorous growth, the back hill really got baked in August with its Southern exposure. We'd spend a couple hours almost every evening out there with the hose trying to give everything a good soak, but it was just too time consuming to keep up that nonsense (although the mosquitos sure enjoyed our time in the yard during those late summer evenings). Although I wasn't sure I'd use it at the time, before they back-filled the leach filled I had laid out a length of 1" black poly pipe from the house up to the center of the back yard, then tee'd it to run along the length of the back wall to each corner near the septic vents. I also laid out a couple lengths of 12-3 UF to each corner in case I wanted power back there. As it turns out I later used both the water and power at each location, and was very glad I didn't have to dig up the yard to get everything installed.
Irrigation components, November 2008. (6 photos)
I wasn't interested in installing a bunch of pop-up lawn sprinklers as a brute force, hose everything down solution, since that
uses a lot of water wetting down stuff that doesn't need it. I turned to the net for information on irrigation systems, and found an
excellent resources at IrrigationTutorials.com 
.
I decided that incorporating a highly efficient micro-irrigation system that utilized drip emitters at each plant and misters for the moss
and ferns would be the way to go. I ended up getting all my supplies from Dripworks.com
and have been very pleased with their
fantastic service, fair prices and fast shipping.
The cost of everything I needed for the initial installation was under $400 (including the timer and electronic zone valves), which was certainly very reasonable. Performing the installation was another matter entirely, and explains why there doesn't seem to be many folks around willing to install these types of systems. It's not particularly difficult work, it just takes a long time. I started by mapping on graph paper where every woody plant was planted, then added areas that would need misters or micro-sprinklers to take care of ground covers. I then totaled up the amount of volume required to run all that stuff, and figured out I'd need to break it up into 4 zones based on the pressure and flow rate available at the source. The next step was to install the valves for the 4 zones in the 1" main line and run low-voltage control wires from each valve to the control timer. With the valves installed, I then ran lengths of 1/2" thin wall poly from each valve to feed the various zones, branching as needed to cover everything I'd mapped out. The 1/2" trunk lines get buried just a few inches below surface in the mulch, so a sunny day or a heat gun were needed to persuade the stuff to go where I wanted it.
Once the 1/2" lines were all installed, flushed and capped, the time came for the real nit-picky stuff: the installation of the emitters and sprayers. Every woody plant received a pair of 1/2 gallon-per-hour drip emitters on each side of the main stem, attached through a 1/4" feeder line that was connected to the trunk line with a small plastic barbed fitting. Sprayers and misters are threaded into a 1/4" diameter thick-walled riser tube that then attached to a support stake, and more 1/4" feeder tube back to the trunk line. As I said - not particularly difficult work but it required hours and hours of crawling around in the garden fussing with little plastic bits. When the system was finally all installed, I set the timer to run for 20 minutes per zone, starting at 5am each morning, and it does a wonderful job of keeping the plants happy all summer long. I also connected a rain sensor to the control timer, which shuts down the system during and after any significant rainfall.
Living with the Garden
Tinkering with the irrigation system.
Irrigation System Maintenance
Since the initial installation back in 2003, I've expanded the irrigation system to accommodate additional plants and the growth of
existing plants, upgrading to larger emitters on some plants and installing new feeders as needed for new plants. I've also replaced
the vacuum breaker I initially installed at the source (which was just a length of hose attached to a tee on an outside hose bib)
with a proper reduced pressure zone backflow preventer that's piped in to the plumbing system. The idea was to have all outside water
supplied from a deep well that I got working again after it had been disconnected by the original property owner when municipal water
was installed. Unfortuanely, there's so much iron in our ground water here that when I used the well for the irrigation system, it
turned many of the rocks orange with rust as soon as it came out of the misters (cleaning that up should be interesting). I've still
got the well connected to all the hose bibs for outdoor use, (which is mainly for filling the pond without the need to add de-chlorinator),
and the irrigation system was re-connected to municipal water when the backflow preventer was installed. I've also installed a fertilizer
injector in the system that allows us to give everything a shot of Miracle-Gro® every two weeks throughout
the growing season.
The only real maintenance required is a day each Spring going over the system and re-burying a few lines the get squeezed to the surface over the winter, and a few hours each Autumn draining everything down, pulling the valves, and replacing the sealed feeder caps with self-draining caps (we don't have to blow out the lines with air with the valves removed - the little water remaining in the lines can freeze and expand without damaging anything). The micro irrigation system has worked out beautifully to help maintain all the plantings in the garden, and allows enough flexibility that plants can be moved or added without a huge hassle.
A tripod ladder is must-have for safe tree pruning.
General Pruning & Plant Care
As the plants have begun to approach their mature sizes, I began pruning a few times a year to achieve the shapes and styles appropriate to
a Japanese style garden. I really enjoy pruning, especially with good quality tools (Felco and Okatsune are my favorites by far), and the effects
should start to show over the next few growing seasons. Other than pruning, mowing the lawn, and bi-weekly feedings, the plants require little care
thanks to the irrigation system. I don't look at working in the garden as "working" either - if I didn't want to go tinker in the yard, I would
have gone for lots of rolling lawn and a riding mower - time spent in the garden is time well spent, which is why we built it in the first place.
Keeping up with leaf clean-up is probably my least favorite garden chore, although it only takes a couple of weekends each fall, as long as we don't get too much rain so the leaves are dry and the mulcher/vacuum unit can get them up. We also need to remember to get the net over the pond before the Oaks let go, or the pond will completely fill with leaves. Once the weather turns consistently chilly (below 50F), the fish pretty much go to sleep until spring, and the pond filters get shut down since there's no more fish waste to process during the winter. The only other winter activity in the garden is some dormant pruning on the Maples, fruit trees and Clethra, which I usually do in February.
Pine Pruning - Creating Niwaki
The Pines along the East edge of the lot.
Most of us are familiar with the look of a Pine bonsai , with a gnarled, twisted trunk and tight pads of needles at the ends of
a sparse few branches. It's the "essence" of the tree, and a look I've always found appealing. The same look is often found in full-sized
trees of a traditional Japanese garden (the Pine Garden at the
Adachi Museum of Art in
Yasugi city, Shimane is possibly the finest example in Japan). I've been wanting to make an attempt at creating my own proper
niwaki (literally "garden trees", as opposed to bonsai which are "potted trees") for a few
years now, although I've been a bit apprehensive about attacking my few Pines with saw and shears. With a "normal" deciduous tree, you can
hack away at the poor thing and if you happen to make a mess of it, the tree will sprout new growth from dormant buds further back on
old growth to fill in the mistakes over time. With most Pines however, once old growth is cut off, it's gone forever as they pretty
much only sprout new growth at the tips. Our trees have been happily growing along now since their last transplant back in 2003, and
were getting to the point where if I was going to do any serious shaping, it was going to have to happen sooner rather than later.
As our garden matured and I knew I'd need to began snipping and cutting in 2008, I took some time to investigate the idea of Pine pruning in the Winter of 2007. I read Cass Trumball's excellent Guide to Pruning book (see below), but she only briefly touches on the idea of Japanese style "cloud pruning" and I wanted more information before taking the plunge. I found Jake Hobson's outstanding Niwaki, one of the first English language books on the subject, gave me the level of detail I needed to confidently begin the process of creating the trees we desire.
I began Pine pruning in late Summer of 2008, although by that late in the growing season I simply pinched back the main growing tips of the trees to try and slow them down a little until the next year. I also took a few feet off the top of largest Spruce in order to begin forming a proper head this Spring. With a fairly wet Spring in 2009, the Pines have put up a surprising amount of new growth, and seeing that what I did last Summer didn't kill them, I decided to do some more severe formative pruning in addition to candle pinching. Because the trees are well established (the largest of the 6 was nearly 20' tall), there's not much I can do at this point to create a curved or zig-zag trunk-line. Instead, I decided to attempt to remove limbs along the trunk to create areas of less foliage that will give the appearance of "movement" in the trunk while avoiding the "Christmas tree" shape that some of the trees naturally assume.
Formative pruning on a couple Pines (4 photos).
Formative Pruning
Formative pruning began with a lot of walking around the tree and looking at existing branch locations and foliage concentrations.
Three of the 6 trees are Spruce, and while certainly not an ideal species for what I'd like to accomplish, I think I can still impose an
interesting shape on these things. I also noticed that the Spruce were actually sprouting some new growth further back on the branches
I candle-pinched the year before, so I figure if I really hack off something I shouldn't have, there's a good chance the tree will break
bud to fill in any blanks I create by accident (although if a cut branch is left with no needles at all, it's doubtful it will break bud).
Even though I had removed a couple feet from the top of the largest Spruce, I still felt the new head was going to end up being too tall (mostly because I wouldn't be able to get at the candles easily with my 14' ladder). I took a look at the top cut I had made the year before and saw that it had healed nicely, so I decided to make a new head cut about 4' below the initial one. This would allow me to use one of the side branches just below the new topping cut to form a new head a couple feet above the cut, and off to one side of the center line of the tree (and also reach the candles of the new crown from the ladder). With a mental picture of which branch was going to become the trunk of the new crown, I then worked my way down the tree removing a branch or two from each "ring" of branches to create a bit of a "spiral staircase" with masses of remaining foliage forming each of the steps (I think the danzukuri or "stepped" style of niwaki pruning is the best option for the Spruce). I ran into one problem not too far below the new crown when I found 3 fuzzy pink residents in a Robin's nest located on the branch group I wanted to remove. I skipped that section, and kept working down the tree. I'll go back and remove the branches in that area once the chicks are out and about.
The rest of the Pines also received some formative pruning treatment, with the removal of a few limbs to open up the tree a bit and reveal some of the trunk and branch structure. In addition to the largest Spruce, there's only 1 other tree (a White Pine) that's at the "final height", so the rest of the tress don't get a lot of branch removal at this point. Hopefully I can direct the strongest growth where I want it on the younger tress, and won't need to remove branches later. The smallest of the White Pines had a dead limb fall into it from an Oak a couple years ago, when the Pine was only about 6 feet tall. The limb crashed down and wiped out most of the existing crown and a number of branches from the side of the tree. I cut back the damaged stuff at the time, and wasn't too sure if the tree was going to make it. Looking at the tree now, I think it's got the most potential to form a nice niwaki of all the Pines along the East fence.
Candle pinching (5 photos).
Candle Pinching
Once the basic shape is established with formative pruning (or at least as much as I'm going to remove this season - these trees need
a fair amount of work, but it shouldn't happen all at once), the shears and saws get put away, and candle work begins. Developing nice,
full foliage pads on a Pine requires a 2 step process: candle pinching (midoritsumi ) takes place in the Spring,
followed by thinning and old needle removal (momiage ) in the Fall. This candle pinching requires a good deal of
patience and close attention to detail, but I think the results will be worth the effort. I cannot stress enough the importance of doing
this work by hand, and the timing is critical. I highly recommend some cotton gloves with latex palms (like the Atlas AG300
) and long sleeves, since you're going to be covered with Pine sap by the time you're done. As for the timing, I did candle work last
year in August on the White Pines. Because the candles were quite long and hard, I went after many of them with garden snips - this
year I could see every spot I had snipped, since the tips of the needles were all brown where I cut candles last year, rather than pinch
them off.
Because I'm working to develop the shape of these trees in addition to creating dense foliage pads, I don't remove all the first growth candles (as would normally be done during midoritsumi ). Instead, I usually remove the center candle completely by just snapping it off, and then snap the 2 or 3 side candles in half. Each of the side candles will form a new branch (which will then get the same treatment), and removing the center candle of the main branch prevents the main branch from just continuing as a long, straight (un-interesting) pine bough. If I were performing maintenance pruning, then all of the candles would be removed to force a second growth of shorter, stubby candles to be dealt with in the Fall (and thus keep the same basic shape of the tree by preventing it from growing new branches). I do remove all the candles on branches I don't want to extend, or at least snap most of them in half. Every branch tip on the tree gets something done to it, so pinching a single medium tree can be an all day affair.
Once all the trees have received a good going-over, there's nothing much else to do to them but wait for the second flush of growth where candles have been removed. The new stubby candles will also get pinched off (at least on branches I don't want to extend), then I'll try removing some of the old needles further back on the branches that are "finished" to reveal more of the inner branch structure. I may not be having much luck with my bonsai so far, but the same basic concepts seem to be working well on the full-sized trees and we're looking forward having some proper niwaki in our garden someday. I'll add photos again when doing the momiage work later in the season.
Gardening Reference Materials
The following titles have been used both to design some of the aspects of the garden, as well as more practical advice regarding pruning and construction. Additional titles are listed in the Tea House and Bonsai sections
Sakuteiki Visions of the Japanese Garden:
A Modern Translation of Japan's Gardening Classic
by Jiro Takei, Marc P. Keane
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing
Pub. Date: September, 2001
ISBN-13: 978-0804832946
by Kiyoshi Seike, David H. Engel, Masanobu Kudo
Publisher: Kodansha International
Pub. Date: February 1993
ISBN-13: 978-4770016614
Japanese Garden Design
by Marc P. Keane, Ohashi Haruzo
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing
Pub. Date: September, 2004
ISBN-13: 978-0804836043
by Charles Chesshire
Publisher: Lorenz Books
Pub. Date: April, 2008
ISBN-13: 978-0754817727
Japanese Gardening
by Charles Chesshire
Publisher: Aquamarine
Pub. Date: June, 2006
ISBN-13: 978-1903141342
by Michiko Rico Nose, Michael Freeman
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing
Pub. Date: August, 2002
ISBN-13: 978-0804834377
Living with Japanese Gardens
by Lisa Parramore, Chadine Flood Gong, Svein Olslund
Publisher: Gibbs Smith, Publisher
Pub. Date: July, 2006
ISBN-13: 978-1586858186
by Geeta Mehta, Kimie Tada, Noboru Murata
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing
Pub. Date: November, 2008
ISBN-13: 978-4805309421
Japanese Gardens: 80 Glorious Gardens
by Pavel Cihal, Romana Cihalova
Publisher: Pavel Cihal
Pub. Date: 2005
ISBN-13: 978-8023951974
by David Young, Michiko Young, Tan Hong Yew
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing
Pub. Date: October, 2005
ISBN-13: 978-0804835985
Niwaki: Pruning, Training and Shaping Japanese Garden Trees
by Jake Hobson
Publisher: Timber Press, Inc.
Pub. Date: April, 2007
ISBN-13: 978-0881928358
by Eric Mader
Publisher: Kingyo Press
Pub. Date: 2005
ISBN-13: 978-1411625655
Building Bamboo Fences
by Isao Yoshikawa
Publisher: Japan Publications Trading
Pub. Date: October, 2001
ISBN-13: 978-4889960808
What, When, and Where and How to Prune for a More Beautiful Garden
by Cass Turnbull, Kate Allen
Publisher: Sasquatch Books
Pub. Date: December, 2005
ISBN-13: 978-1570614682
The Pruning Book
by Lee Reich
Publisher: Taunton Press
Pub. Date: March, 1999
ISBN-13: 978-1561583164
My station
Green tea
