
In a quiet residential area, on the hillside once known as “Yagoto-Yama”, we have opened our garden-showroom.
It is reasonable that things change with time, but we felt a certain sense of concern: people cut down giant trees just because clearing leaves up is tiresome, or dismantle the garden created by predecessors to turn it into concrete parking lot. They live further and further away from the soil, the source of life…this concern made us to open the showroom. We also hoped to become a consultation hub for gardens, as we often heard voices of confusion about whom to ask for help with their gardens.

Originally there were a concrete parking and a garage on this site. We aimed to propose ways to enjoy not only the garden but also the space between indoors and outdoors. Then we installed large glass sliding-doors at the eaves of the garage, which had been divided by shutters, to incorporate part of the flowerbed indoors. Ornamental plants grow vigorously in the indoor-flowerbed, making it easy to enjoy the view indoors.
We improved the garden’s soil as it had long been suffocated by concrete. Now the garden consists of two parts: a place featuring evergreen lower-trees, and a place paved with old Teppei-stones (a parking area). We didn’t demolish everything so as to feel the multilayer of time. Part of the earthen-floor was left as a terrace and garage floor was left intact.
In the interior, a Jurassic marble boulder serves as a counter, and the newly constructed opening similar to Nijiri-Guchi (small entrance) connects the entrance hall and the garage. Shelves, doors, water basins, watering place, and appliances were chosen from primitive items, such as materials gathered from around the world and the antiques.

From the garden, numerous resources such as fallen-leaves and pruned branches are collected. We set up a leaf compost to enable on-site recycling. We hope that visitors get conscious of being part of the cycle of nature, and the meaning of owning a garden from different perspectives.
We are planning on-site activities. For example, Hananofu-Shuho conducts a Nageire-bana(Ikebana unconstrained by formality) workshop, utilizing cut plants from the garden. And we also invite guests who have unique perspectives on communing with nature, to run lecture sessions called “Manabi-No-Niwa” (the garden of learning).
While it is a place for vague, formless, grassroot activities, we hope it will continue to change and be utilized as a place to cultivate the garden culture.
