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Essay

Planting an idea

By Kit Pancoast Nagamura

As blooming goes primetime this month and waves of cherry blossoms wash over the country, most people manage to schedule a few hours to appreciate nature. Pouring out of sleek office buildings and high-rise apartments, loaded with sake and blue "leisure sheets," off they go in search of a park or patch of land with cherry trees.

For some, though, the bloom of nature is a year-round pleasure, rooted figuratively and literally in a quotidian respect for life cycles. For those, taking time to view flowers is a daily ritual, restricted neither by season nor blossom.

Though many vehemently disagree, I happen to like Shitamachi-style flower shows. You know the kind I'm talking about, where residents fill old styrofoam fish boxes with plants or support small trees by tying them to flimsy balcony frames. How marvelous when merchants string up flowering vines around shop entrances or when housewives stake claims to sidewalks and streets as their own impromptu yards.

These ad-hoc gardens are rarely works of art -- at best, they're built around perhaps a trellis, a hodgepodge of weatherworn plastic pots or a ceramic bowl of minnows choked in algae as the water feature -- but they are works of social significance. The effort to maintain them testifies to the lingering desire of some urban dwellers to stay connected with the earth. It's a grounding impulse, despite the lack of ground.

Masterworks of landscaping and garden design are breathtaking in Japan, without question, and nature left to its own devices here once provided a paradise of uncommon variety and beauty. Compared to these, what's so great about the Shitamachi DIY bits of greenery here and there?

Between the drab stretches of artifacts -- shops, parking lots, office buildings, and homes -- there's a visual break provided by growing greenery. In December, you might find a fall finale of miniature red maple leaves, and in mid-winter a quince bonsai, yuzu trees, or camellia bushes feeding ravenous (raucous!) brown-eared bulbuls. In February, small plum trees, Japanese pink andromeda, and daphne flowers perfume the air. By March, planters are bursting with tulips, wisteria, lilies, daisies and the list goes on and on, month by month, crowded with more horticultural diversity than any manicured garden could manage.

A favorite restaurant of mine in Shitamachi uses a doorstep container garden to garnish and supplement the menu. The proprietors would never think of buying Japanese pepper (sansho), perilla leaves (shiso), or various decorative flowers: they grow for free within reach.

Noting this, my son decided to give planting a try. Prying out the seeds from his breakfast grapefruit, he planted them in a pot on our balcony. Four years later, he now has a robust tree, over 150 centimeters tall. Swallowtail butterflies lay eggs on its glossy leaves, which exude an aromatic fragrance. Checking out the efforts of some neighbors, we've found that kumquats, loquats, basil, rosemary, mikan and chives all grow almost effortlessly amongst the decorative flowers.

Variety and whimsy, the unexpected and the educational, miniature beauty grown large in the heart: these are some of the gifts a Shitamachi flower viewing offers. Check it out this season; sake optional.


Shukan ST: March 26, 2010

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