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Marijke & Piet.
So far we have not seen any real winter weather. It is more like an extremely long autum.
Last week we had the very first frost of this season on Monday 16th and Tuesday 17nd of January 2012. This is exceptionally late! And it actually lasted only 2 nights, and only just below 0°C.
What we did have in Summer and in Spring, but also up to now, is rain, plenty of rainfall, and actually far to much of it.
This shows that the drainage-system that we constructed in the garden, in particular under the Ginshanada (i.e. our gravel “Sea”) is not at all a luxury, it is a pure necessity.
It sometimes takes a couple of hours until all the water has disappeared but imagine if we had forgotten about, or just omitted, the drainage.
Over winter the Wisteria side shoots need to get pruned back to 6 to 10 cm long (2.5 – 4 inch), leaving only 2 or 3 buds on the side-shoots. These will be the flowering spurs on the Wisteria.
This pruning should be carried out each year. The only shoots to be left untouched are those which are required to extend the size or direction of your wisteria. In our case that is history as the current size and shape is what we desired.
This year I did the pruning rather late in the year. Although it might be done even in the first quarter that would not be feasible in our climate. It must be done prior to frost and snowfall. Last year we had both in October/November already ! This year we had a “strange” shift of seasons and the last months have been extremely mild and dry.Untill a week ago we still had green leaves on this “tree”.
After winter pruning the plant makes a rather curious object in the garden.
An article about our garden written by Olga van Saane has been published in September 2011 issue of the garden-magazine “Neskuchniy Garden” («Нескучный Сад») in Ukraine.
An abstract of the article, in the Russian-language, can also be found on the blog of the article author.
Yes! With 24 other places we have been nominated as “Most beautiful spot in the province of Flevoland“.
The search of this spot is to commemorate the fact that this year our province officially exists 25 year. The inauguration was on 27 Juni 1985 but the work to create this “New land” had started some 30 to 40 years before that date.
The city of Lelystad is situated on the “New Land” (i.e. reclamed land) and hence is even younger than it. Lelystad is the capital of the province of Flevoland. The city was founded in 1967 and was named after Cornelis Lely, who engineered the Afsluitdijk, making the reclamation possible. Lelystad is situated approximately 5 meters (16 ft) below sea level.
Yesterday the local broadcasting station crew of “Omroep Flevoland” came to visite us to make a radio interview and a film-clip for television.
And guess what, during this rainy day it stopped raining for about one our … during these recordings!
The Omroep Flevoland broadcasting microphone for radio display’s the bird that was choisen as the symbol for the province. It is a Harrier (species of diurnal hawk), in Dutch kiekendief.
For the television recordings a smaller and wireless microphone was used.
To see a Tsubo-en Groundplan, the Tsubo-en location in Google Earth or on Google Maps, click the House and garden related link below.
To view the resulting video-clip see the clip at the bottom of our page: Zen means real attention.
In its native environment this tree can reach a hight of 40-70 meter (130-230 feet). That is why a couple of years ago we decided to take out the head. Limiting the growth and shaping the head is on of the annual activities. The needles of this tree can become very old, up to 12 years of age.
One other reason for the special treatment we give this tree are it’s attributes that will drop off onto the gravel and into the small Island “lake”, and that is what we are trying to prevent.
The cones are beautiful and also top-heavy. Eye-catching, upright, large (up to 25 cm, 10 inch long), first green they then become dark steel-blue and eventually turn bronze/brown as they age and mature.
Some of them drop-off and even break before they have matured. I do not allow them to mature because each and every one will end up on the ground in many hundreds of seeds on pieces of hard-wood.
The Pollen cones are clustered along undersides of current year’s twigs and appear in the spring. These too are removed as much as possible before falling off, onto the gravel or in to the pond.
The bottom photo shows the annual harvest (except for the wood) of seed-cones and pollen-cones.
Most of the solitary trees need one major annual treatment of pruning and trimming for shape and size.
After 12 years in our garden, most trees ar some 15 to 17 years of age and have now reached the right size and often the right shape. It is in particular the shape that can be further perfected.
This year we started this work early in the cycle as a result of the unusually soft and sunny weather conditions during spring. This post shows some highlights of this work. For details please use the hyperlinks to earlier articles or to the main-site.
Although additional pruning and clipping may be required, that is more like an ad hoc activity, depending on individual growth and time available. This is a mandatory and substantial exorcise in the garden and a continuation of the Midoritsumi or ‘green picking’ the pine-trees, activity that needs to be done early in the season.
Pinus leucodermis “Satellit” before and after mideritsumi of new growdth. This is much later and less abundand then that of the Pinus densiflora.
Last year we did Ulmus parvifolia, Elm-tree pollarding and thinning in the front garden, and this year we decided we had to do some reshaping. Reason for this was the fact that the shape and size now came too close to that of thePrunus lusitanica located in the same area,… and last but not least, it got too big for safety reasons with regard to keeping an open vieuw of our front-door. The photo’s show the size and disk-shape before and the smaller size and globe-shape after. Also see: Ulmus parvifolia, Elm-tree prunning
Our small bamboo fence (take gaki) was constructed in the Yotsume-gaki style. Constructed and placed in 2009 the fence now required repair and maintenance.
A bamboo fence or take gaki ( 竹垣 ) is an important object in many Japanese gardens. Like woods bamboo can last for years in the outdoors with proper maintenance. Bamboo fences also age like wood, it will eventually colour lighter and turn grey. There is a wide diversity of bamboo fences for different purposes.
Fences for enclosing or partitioning a garden, to border walkways or the tall “wing fence”, sodi-gaki, which normally extends from a building or a wall as a decorative screen, or to define space.
A type of bamboo fence is often named after a temple or garden in which it was first used or where its use is prominent, for example the lozenge fence called ryouanjigaki that is used at Ryouan-ji or the kenninjigaki first used at the temple Kenninji also in Kyoto.
As the photo shows some of the bamboo canes feld down and others are close to that stage due to the rope that decayed, in particular at the top. Although it is a good Japanese habit to then fully replace all ropes, I decided to only replace those that have rotted and leave those that will make it for at least an other year. This results in some colour differences but this is just a matter of time.
Sagina, called ‘pearlworts’ or ‘Irish-Moss’ (Dutch ‘Vetmuur’) can very well serve as a substitute for moss in a Japanese garden. Unfortunately we have a bad experience with it.
In my post ‘Groundcover maintenance’ I wrote about the fact that Sagina is one of our most feared and persistent weeds in the ground-covers, or actually every ground surface.
How can that be ?
Note: Part of the season this ground-cover will be covered with small but prominent white flowers. If you do not like that look for an other moss substitute.
We have had Sagina before in a previous garden and it performed great. When we started our Tsubo-en project one of the moss substitutes that we wanted to use at the time was Sagina subilata cultivar ‘Aurea’ . Compact and dense growing with relatively short stems and purely white flowers.
At least that was the intention. We where sold the wrong species !
It proved to be Sagina xxx-something. Not the cultivar that we had been looking for but an other species that multiplies via seeds. Very potent seeds.
By the time we found out, a couple of months later, it was already too late. Although we tried to removed all of it at the time, the harm was already done and seeds where spread. From then on we have been and are still spending a substantial amount of time to limit further spreading. Something that is impossible. On the other hand we can not just let it go because it will even populate end for sure eventually overgrow, the Ginshanada.
Depending on the weather conditions and plant growth in the garden we have a first preventive spraying round in mid-April.
This year we had an early and fabulous spring with summer-like temperatures and little, actually far too less, rainfall. Due to this the insects started their activities very early already and it was no luxury at al that we started preventive spraying early in April.
To prevent mistakes due to mix up of liquids, containers or sprayers, we have a number of well marked pressure-sprayers for different purposes. The one shown is a four Liter or one Gallon one.
These are some of the previous post on this subject.
Depending on the weather conditions and plant growth in the garden we have a first preventive spraying round in mid-April. This year we had an early and fabulous spring with summer-like temperatures and little, actually far too less, rainfall. Due to this I started spraying with insecticide already in early April.
In Nasty insects in buxus (box) I wrote about insects in boxwood. One of the major pests, not as such in buxus but in our the garden as a whole, is the Boxwood psyllid or Cacopsylla buxi (Dutch: topmijt of buxustopmijt en buxusbladvlo).
This pest is the most serious pest of this evergreen plant and due to the harm it can bring, the most dangerous one in our garden.
Although I started spraying very early in the season with this systematic internal agent that gets into the sap-stream and is active for some three months, some weeks after the first treatment we still see a lot of curly leafs (cupped, distorted, stunted) and white secretion. This is because the insecticide uses an internal-agent.
Only after the insects have started nibbling, sucking end eating they get killed. But then at least the damage is limited to a minimum. The bottom photo shows the damage. This has opened after the insects have died, and in the best case will continue growing.
So far we have not seen any real winter weather. It is more like an extremely long autum.
Most of the solitary trees need one major annual treatment of pruning and trimming for shape and size.
Last year we did 
Also see: 
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