Niwaki

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Niwaki is the Japanese word for "garden trees".

The technique of niwaki is more about what you do to a tree than the tree itself. While Western gardeners enjoy experimenting with a wide range of different plants, Japanese gardeners experiment through training and shaping a relatively limited palette of plants.

Trees play a key role in the gardens and landscapes of Japan as well as being of important spiritual and cultural significance to its people. Fittingly, Japanese gardeners have fine-tuned a distinctive set of pruning techniques meant to coax out the essential characters of niwaki. Niwaki are often cultivated to achieve some very striking effects: trees are made to look older than they really are with broad trunks and gnarled branches; trees are made to imitate wind-swept or lightning-struck trees in the wild; Cryptomeria japonica specimens are often pruned to resemble free-growing trees.

The principles of niwaki may be applied to garden trees all over the world and are not restricted to Japanese Gardens.

[edit] References

Hobson, Jake. Niwaki: Pruning, Training and Shaping Trees the Japanese Way. Timber Press: Portland, 2007. ISBN 978-0-88192-835-8.