What a long title!

Being inspired by the gardens and landscapes in Japan is a great way to focus my efforts with Hinoki. It helps with setting a direction. But sometimes it can be frustrating. Because, well, honestly,… some of our landscapes can be quite the eyesore here. How come? What causes the difference? And what can we do about it?

I can see four reasons. We are capable of working on each of those, although to different degrees.

One – We have too much space
Japan looks the way it does due to two main reasons: being an island, and being so small (compared to its population).
From the scale of its shopping streets, zoning laws that permit much more mixed-use to the miniature size of its gardens: there is less ground to cover. If you have a small parking lot, then one tree will do for creating some shade. Our gigantic parking lots cost fortunes to be “greened” and as a result, often cheap plants are put in, which don’t last very long. Our gardens are too big (given that most people have no time to maintain them). Imagine spending the same budget or time on a garden that is a quarter of the size of today, and you can create something far more interesting. But our budgets are stretched thin because our hedges are soooo long, our lawns are soooo big, the space between shrubs is  soooo extended.
The good news? This one will partially take care of itself. As we are experiencing a devastating real estate boom, those gigantic gardens will be a thing of the past. And some of the newer business and industrial areas have a smaller footprint and less parking space. Good!
On the other hand, take a look around the new developments on Jingle Pot, and you see future upkeep disasters being put in as we speak. Or drive through Langley and anything new popping up east of there, and weep.
Action point: If you have too much garden, find ways to put it to use. Plant a tree grove, let your market-gardener friend plants a veggie patch, open it up to the neighbour’s kids to play. Oh, and then let those neighbour kids do the mowing 😉
And take your business to smaller shops, closer to home, without a car. Whenever possible. And comment them on the plants they put outside on the sidewalk for sprucing up the place.

Two – Our landscapes are young.
Nanaimo’s gardens are growing in an area that was clearcut, partially left to regrow and then cut again.If we are lucky enough to have an older tree in our landscape, it is either a butchered apple tree (from our old orchards) or a stand of douglas firs that have been mismanaged, and are now more a safety issue than anything else.
When compared to a city that is just a bit older, like Victoria, it is immediately clear that a major part of beauty comes through age. Letting magnificent plants grow into glorious maturity. Take a look at the many tree-covered boulevards in Victoria’s suburbs. Or the sculpted pines on some of the streets in its old Chinatown. Those things take time.
Nanaimo’s new gardens, done the “traditional way” will look silly for many years, because these tiny newly planted trees will only take shape in the next generation’s lifetime.
The Japanese have landscapes (private gardens, parks, temple gardens, boulevards..) that date back hundreds of years. How can we compare?
Well, we can start by valuing and honouring what we have today, like the great oak tree next to Tim Horton’s across the University Village mall.
Action point: Patience and trust, more than anything else, will help us here. And accepting that a majestic old tree can be of more importance than our real estate fantasies. Talk to city councillors and staff about how much you appreciate their efforts to preserve important trees.
And.. accept the demise of “the view”. If we keep cutting down trees because they obstruct “our” view, then soon the only view any one of us will have is that of a stone dead ocean and a polluted wasteland.

Three – Plant choices
This one is a bit more on the nerdy horticultural side. The plants I see again and again in our landscapes are a mix of ill-suited English carry-overs, proven winners for commercial landscaping and invasive horrors.
Our native plants are no silver bullets: sometimes they are ill-suited to your particular garden. Sometimes they are just not visually interesting. YET. The Japanese have been breeding varieties for, again, hundreds of years. We can’t speed up time, but we can start today. Our vine maple, for example, grows well from seed. If you have one in your garden, take the time to collect the seedlings and let them grow in a pot for a few years. If an interesting variation pops up, do something with it! Plant it out, give it to a friend, give it to your gardener.
In the United States, many garden varieties are available of the native manzanitas. Here, we have nothing.
Action point: Order some books at the library about native plants, and gardening in the Pacific Northwest, and experiment. Propagate! Network with your friends and make strong, well-adapted varieties spread in an organic way. Nurseries can do miracles in coming up with strong new varieties, but we are just as much a part of that. So many of the heirloom plants we have today did not come from nurseries (or laboratories) but from someone’s back yard.
Try something new today, and accept that we are not in England, Wales or Scotland. (And Ireland? I don’t know if Ireland has any trees left actually.)

Four – Caring
Ah….. Now it gets interesting. I have seen so many plants in our gardens that, despite the three points mentioned above, could be looking fantastic. If we cared a little bit more. Most of my new customers come with a question to fix problems. Problems caused by someone simply hacking at plants and shrubs. It takes a lot of time, and continuous care, to transform these beauties into the stuff of wonders.
Very often I have to work hard to convince a customer that not cutting down the plant is the best way to get a more interesting plant. I am thankful for every time that someone does brings faith and patience to the table, and lets me start the work to rehabilitate a plant.
Action point: grab a few coffee table books about Japanese landscaping, watch a few videos about their parks and gardens. And get inspired to do better. For your own sake, for everyone’s. And it doesn’t have to be Japanese in order to be inspirational, obviously. Yours truly is certified biased, but there are many wonderfully well kept gardens in any culture. Let’s start taking pride in them. Pride in the work that goes into them. It takes longer than taking pride in a shiny new car, truck or quad. But it will outlive us all, and bring beauty to many generations after us.