Hi, there.
Japanese cornel flowers are in full bloom now. They bloom prettily in the season when other plants do not yet sprout. Since Japanese cornel blooms in early spring, it is also called “春黄金花-harukoganebana” (gold and yellow spring flower). I think that people in old times felt the arrival of spring through these bright yellow flowers. It also produces bright red berries in autumn, and these berries were used as herbal medicine. The Japanese cornel has been a part of people’s lives from ancient times to the present.
Build a Garden Pond
The garden construction,which incorporates elements of traditional Japanese gardens, that I shared in a recent blog has been going well. Since stepping stones and a gatepost have been completed, we started working on a garden pond.
This low stone lantern, “yukimi-tourou,” is the customer’s property. We placed it in a position visible from “yukimi-shoji” (a sliding door with a glass window in houses) for them to enjoy the view of the pond and the lantern. This combination of the lantern and the shoji brings on a feeling of a traditional Japanese garden.
We created a pond instead of a stream because the customer wanted to have an aquatic organism, such as medaka fish (Japanese killifish). And we did drain work properly to prevent the pond from overflowing during rainfall. The gravel we used has a filtration function and does not need to be cleaned frequently. Besides, it keeps pond water clean and controls aquarium algae. We hope we successfully created an environment that is as comfortable as possible for aquatic organisms and plants to live there.
“Tataki” (a traditional Japanese earthen floor) is also nicely done, and it goes well with tile edges. We carefully distributed the materials because the color of the “tataki” floor varies greatly depending on the mixture of soil and cement.
This garden will now proceed to create a wooden fence and planting. We will continue to work on the construction as smoothly as possible so that they can spend the best time of spring in this garden. I hope you, too, will enjoy the updates with us.