Japanese Garden

A few years ago I spent a year in Japan for business and since then I have had a bit of a passion for all thing Japanese especially the food! I also really love traditional Japanese design so now that I work from home and have more time I decided I would create my own Japanese garden. One of my really good friends is from Tokyo and he sent me a load of garden design and photos so I really did not have an excuse now.

First of all I drew up the plans, well actually my very significant other did it. She is a graphics designer so that helped. Once we had the design it was time for the heavy stuff. My girlfriend was determined to have a Koi pond and to be fair no Japanese garden is complete without one. So out came the spade and I dug a nice deep ditch for the Koi pond. There is never a chain gang around when you need one is there!

Next step was off down to our local garden center. We were there for about 3 hours all I wanted was a pond and accessories but made the mistake of taking my girlfriend with me! Let us just say it is a good job I have a big truck! The next task was to dig the original hole to fit the mold. This was pretty easy. so why did I dig the hole first before seeing the pond mold. Answer I have no idea but it is very difficult to judge the size of the pond at the garden center so I am actually glad I did it this way.

Next was planting the Japanese style plants my girlfriend had bought. Ok so if I had not taken her with me to the garden center I would have had to make more trips! We are lucky enough to have a little stream running across the bottom of our garden so we grabbed some of the stones to decorate the ponds edge which gave it a very authentic feel.

Well we are very pleased with our efforts so far and tomorrow we are going shopping for some Koi for the pond. Being a keen fisherman I hope I will not be tempted to grab my rod and start trying to catch them from the pond. It is a real shame our stream is not a bit bigger and a bit deeper or I would be stocking it with trout as we speak!

By: James Kronefield

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