Japanese tools for gardening/Niwaki and Niwashi - Miscellaneous

JAPAN, my Love!

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         I wish to express here all my compassion and my desire to support the Japanese people, hit in recent days by the huge of tsunami disaster.

Within NIWAKI and Co, we are gone immediately in search of news about the health of our Japanese friends, and we are pleased to present their testimony, among other things, of our guide/interpreter in the JAPAN NIWAKI TOUR :

        « This sudden earthquake that has devastated a quarter of Japanese territory, is a power of 1.78 times larger than the case of Kobe in 1995.
The force of nature is impressive, and we will know soon more sensitive results of the disaster at the human level. Many people stay home tonight, in the cold, in areas where gas and electricity are cut off. Blessed are those who can still walk through the night to their weakened home and family.
I thank you wholeheartedly for your kind words, your genuine concerns. Your warm thoughts for this piece of land, will allow its residents to live and overcome with courage all the subsequent consequences of the disaster.
A thousand thank you. Yukiko »

and of our supplier of tools for NIWAKI and NIWASHI, located about 60kms from the impact point and which we had no news since the quake.

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        « Thank you for your concern. We have experienced the rolling of the great earthquake, but fortunately we haven’t had no damage, nor for our health, nor for our company. Electricity was cut for about 2 days. The city of the Pacific Coast by cons is totally destroyed by the tsunami. A big thank you. Yasuhito. »

We wish them a lot of courage and all of our thoughts are with them.

Niwaki and Niwashi - Miscellaneous

Trainings program and intellectual property

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         In light of recent events, I want to draw your attention today, to the fact that the trainings program, taught in France at the Ecole NIWAKI Inspiration ZEN and soon on other continents, is an exclusive creation of Frederique Dumas at the international level, nurtured over 25 years of study and practice of landscape, trees pruning and education, finalized during these last four years in Japan. This trainings program doesn’t exist anywhere else, it doesn’t also exist in the Japanese islands. Only available techniques and styles.

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        Any attempt to offer them by another person, even aura of any notoriety, can only be a pure act of copying, which can be as low quality and subject to the laws of Intellectual Property.

        The profession of teacher (as for therapist) can not be improvised. It is necessary to have the fiber and require certain qualities and training and experience bases, that can not be invented. When a person decides to teach, only by competition and so as not to be outdone in relation to the neighbor, she lures and loses sight of her mission! How the service could it be quality?!

Techniques of niwaki/Traditions and culture of Japan

Niwaki of maple

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        A little reminder to start. The term niwaki is not just to nominate trees with dense masses of vegetation poetically called “clouds” by the West and are distributed on both sides along the trunk of a tree. But this term niwaki means all trees of a garden from the time when man intervenes to guide them by pruning.

As for the Japanese pruning, it is used to reveal in a confined space such as the garden, the beauty of the tireless work of the various elements in nature. Or restore aesthetically closer to reality the characteristics of the essence of a tree and this which was broken, twisted, heavier, denser, reiterated…

And if the formation of “clouds” to characterize the forms of a heterogeneous canopy fully applies to softwood, the situation is quite different when it comes to most of the deciduous species. There is one in every case where it does not especially, there is that of “acer”, the maples.

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Their main characteristic is the lightness. A single layer of leaves on branches extending to touch the infinity… Create clouds and densification of the vegetation is simply an aberration. Again, this may be vegetable sculpture, but certainly not Japanese pruning.

A maple with “clouds” is something that in Japan, you’ll never see!

Japanese tools for gardening

The nobility of a handmade tool

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        To have a soul, it is essential that an object has sprouted in the imagination of a person, but not only. It is also necessary that he has taken birth in his hands … The moving work of them of all materials.

A mechanical, stereotyped, industrial work provides only lifeless objects. Only handicrafts, handmade are works of art, precious objects. Only when there is a wonderful idea, a high-quality craftsmanship that we reach the pinnacle of human creativity. A definition of luxury. Enrich his life by the beauty, rarity, unique…

Our Japanese tools are handmade by the shokunin – the Japanese craftsmen – and fed on a millennial experience in garden design and steel work, allowing them to represent the ultimate in quality, finesse and precision of tooling. Each piece is UNIQUE.

Imagine the feelings of pleasure and safety, luxury and refinement, associated with high technology giving them a lightness and ease of use unmatched… These beautiful art works are imbued of all the authenticity of Japan.

* In photo, a specialized secateur in the pruning of fruit trees (cherry, apricot, plum and apple)

Our health and inner realization through our garden - Niwatherapy©

Hortitherapy

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GARDENING IN THE SERVICE OF THE DISEASE, STRESS,
BEHAVIORAL DISORDERS …

       Recently, an article in the SNHF magazine described the word “hortitherapy”, originally from England, which designates since the past thirty years, a practice that is becoming more capable over time to improve the lives of patients and their relatives, accompany them to the best, using a soothing environment such as garden, or a manual, artistic and creative support such as gardening activity.

If we look closer, this practice had a routine application in the past in our hospitals and asylums. These institutions have always had beautiful gardens including maintenance amounted mostly to patients, especially in asylums.

The goal is not to praise unduly this past to consider it as a blessed time – because there is no doubt that despite some constraints of profitability ever more draconian, considerable progress has been made at the reception and the relationship with patients – but to rather and simply note that in terms of green spaces, we have significantly decreased… !

The Architecture of the hospital has evolved, in first it had to find place for cars, construct buildings to receive some technologies becoming more and more sophisticated and specialized, re-fit out to minimize the risk of infection… Thus, concrete has invaded everything and gradually replaced trees, flower beds and vegetable gardens.

For twenty years, Americans and Japanese have conducted numerous studies which highlighted the positive impact that the plant could have on stress and anxiety of patients, just like the color green, singing birds or the murmur of a brook… The benefit is become quickly apparent because all these elements allowed to reduce the length of hospitalization.
So obvious that in Canada today, the construction of a hospital must include the creation of a garden in its technical specifications !

When will the awareness for France ?!

Niwaki and Niwashi - Miscellaneous

Welcome on Niwaki and Niwashi’s blog…!

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Good morning at all…!

       Niwashi means “man of garden” in Japanese… This blog are going therefore to apply to all lovers of beautiful garden and tools, but not only for fans of Japanese garden and Japanese pruning or niwaki. To all lovers of the garden…
In addition, the excellence of garden tools should not be solely restricted to a small number…

      The Niwaki and Niwashi’s blog are going to address various and diverse topics, the art of Japanese garden and niwaki, of course, but also on everything that can be attractive in the garden in general …

      I will welcome you with a great pleasure ! This blog will not exist in a conventional way, but I will write you a variety of articles according to the current events and in an irregularly way. It can also possible that I note you some remarks on a very personal way or simply inform you of an interesting event to come. The comments are opened, so don’t hesitate to share, but if you prefer, you can obviously write me. I will answer each of your messages, as I have always done, even if sometimes with a little late …

See you soon !