Niwaki: Pruning, Training and Shaping Trees the Japanese Way -- Book Review

Niwaki: Pruning, Training and Shaping Trees the Japanese Way by Jake Hobson is simply the art of growing garden trees to conform to your idea of a tree. Japanese gardeners mastered this form centuries ago. By adopting this gardening art form to our smaller and smaller gardens regular trees will be made to conform to suit the gardener owners needs. Every garden will become uniquely personal, a common maple tree trimmed and shaped by you will never be the same maple tree in your neighbour's yard. Each unique plant becomes a specimen or focal point in your garden.

This book cover karikomi as well. Karikomi is the art of trimming grown covering shrubs into blissful dollops of foliage that should contrast each other in texture and foliage colour.

This book covers pruning, training and shaping of garden plants into shapes like you have seen in Japanese gardens. The line drawings make the pruning easy to follow. The glossary of Japanese terms is easy to access and read. You never have to worry about forgetting what a term means. The Japanese to English botanical plant names will help you out at any good nursery. The numerous colour photographs are well used to explain the different styles. This book takes the scary out of pruning like the Japanese.

--

 Bruce