Learning With the Gardener: Fostering Studies III

On the afternoon of February 22 (Sat.), participants in this event helped Murin-an’s head gardener take care of the garden’s plants. There was pouring rain in the morning, but it stopped by the time this seminar started, bringing everyone a great sense of relief.

The seminar started indoors with a demonstration of how to prune fir trees and cut their branches to give them a natural look. Everyone took pictures of the gardener while he showed them how to keep a cut wound from looking conspicuous.

After observing how living things in the garden are pruned, participants experienced how to remove bamboo sheath and dead branches by hand when caring for kuma bamboo grass and square bamboo. Because there are many living things on the ground, we were worked carefully as we did our pruning work..

This being a rainy day and the last seminar for this series, we had participants cut off the dead steams of iris flowers. Our head gardener said, “We left these as part of the autumn and winter scenery. But since spring will be visiting soon, let’s cut them.” Thus, we all removed these long stalks with bulbs on one end of them.

Fostering Studies Series no. 4 starts in April! We hope to see you there!