Die Lehre des Gartens – Gespräche in Japan Carola Platzek First published in 2017 By Schlebrügge.Editor Paperback ISBN: 978-3-903172-18-0 Carola Platzek visited Japan several times to Research the Sakuteiki, Japans oldest gardening manual. As art- and cultural researcher with a university degree in history and philosophy, she is most interested...Continue Reading
Pines in Japanese gardens are pruned twice a year. In my company in Germany, where we hadn’t so much time, we only did all the tasks together once in early summer, which is possible too, but not desirable. Here in Japan, my first company did both, Midoritsumi in early summer, and...Continue Reading
Requested by one of our readers was an article about maintenance works throughout the year. I thought it would be nice to make a monthly series out of this. Here is part 6, in which I talk about the works in June. You can find the other parts here: 1, 2, 3,...Continue Reading
Japanese people tend to state that foreigners can’t understand the concept of wabi-sabi. But is this really true? Or is it one of these myths Japanese like so much hearing and spreading about their country and culture like that one about other countries don’t have four distinctive seasons? When I...Continue Reading
Requested by one of our readers was an article about maintenance works throughout the year. I thought it would be nice to make a monthly series out of this. This is part 5, in which I talk about the works in May. You can find the other parts here: 1, 2, 3,...Continue Reading
After seeing friends, who reside in Japan, accused of cultural appropriation when wearing kimono by non-Japanese, I wanted to question the torii as a design element in the garden outside of Japan. Is using them cultural appropriation? Starting my research, I asked our mostly non-Japanese followers on Facebook: do you...Continue Reading
Requested by one of our readers was an article about maintenance works throughout the year. I thought it would be nice to make a monthly series out of this. This is part 4, in which I talk about the works in April. You can find the other parts here: 1, 2, 3,...Continue Reading
Requested by one of our readers was an article about maintenance works throughout the year. I thought it would be nice to make a monthly series out of this. This is part 3 about the works in March. You can find the other parts here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6,...Continue Reading
Today I would like to talk about the Ryūmonbaku style waterfalls. Do you know these falls where a stone represents a carp jumping up a fall to become a dragon? The tale goes, that only a strong carp can manage to swim up a river with strong current and pass...Continue Reading
Finally I finished the last book in our “Gardens in Tokyo” series! I am very happy and also a little bit proud. The last book features the secret garden of the Tokyo National Museum, which is only open for the public in spring and autumn. I visited the garden three...Continue Reading
