hakone - gardens: bamboo garden

Kizuna-en is the name of the bamboo garden that represents the close friendship with Saratoga's Sister City, Muko, Japan (a suburb southwest of Kyoto). The groups of large stones represent the City Councils of both cities. The white gravel represents the Pacific Ocean.

Kizuna can be translated as a joining of hands, or a binding of friendship, an appropriate name for this, the newest garden, built in 1987. En means garden in this case. In the construction phase, it was built with the combined efforts of a number of people and organizations from both sides of the Pacific, specifically, Muko and Kyoto in Japan, and Saratoga and adjacent cities here in California. The bamboo garden that was created is a masterpiece of lasting beauty that emerged from a grass and brush-choked hillside.

The site itself was a challenge because of the steep gradients that actually worked to our advantage. The formal part of the garden consists of two sloping graveled terraces, and thus the viewer can see both garden pads from the front in the parking lot area. The lowest pad, (Japan side) on the right side, has a peninsula reaching out with a misaki-doro, or lighthouse style lantern, a gift of Muko's Mayor Noriaki Tamiaki. The lantern on the upper pad is Kanjuji style and a gift of Katsuzo Shimizu and his farmer's group.

There are two bamboo fence styles, both built and donated by the Oike family of Kyoto. The woven fence is the koetsuji-gaki, highly regarded in the Kyoto area, while the low fence on the second wall is the kinkakuji style. The latter was assembled here on-site with materials shipped from Kyoto. Bamboo fences last far longer in our climate than in Japan where the summers are hot and humid.

The stones, both the large ones and those used for the walls, were purchased from a supplier in Santa Rosa, California. Yasui, his nephew Hiroshi Yasui and a team that included Hirata, Moyles, Oike, and Parkinson carefully selected all of the stones. The white gravel, a 1:1 mixture of 3/8-5/8" dolomite and 1/2" quartz (the Yasui mix), came from a stone outlet in Campbell, California.

Three visitors from Japan built the central stone wall: Master Gardener Kawahara, Okuno, a highly skilled mason, and Goto. The front wall is the work of Takashi Tamiaki. The garden itself was installed by Tamiaki and two helpers: Nakayama and Ogawa. Various members of the Bamboo Society and Sister City helped with the stone placement, planting, and spreading of the gravel.

The Bamboo Society has been caring for the garden for many years. They began receiving very special, fragile, and highly prized, bamboos from Yasui in Japan in 1985. They had to be held in quarantine for 24 months. Volunteers built a USDA-approved greenhouse near the old concrete water tank at the top of the garden. Junji Kagata donated the black bamboos we have on display in the Upper House. Of interest to many are the black culms often thought to be Black-stemmed bamboo. In actuality, these are from rafters of a very old house, selected by Kagata's grandfather, blackened by the soot of cooking fires. Their age is estimated to be around 200 years old.

Some of the bamboo, like the vivax down in front in the lower left-hand corner, came from local gardens. One source of this bamboo was Los Gatos, and another was a garden in Saratoga. This bamboo has produced culms of 5 inches in diameter and almost 60 feet in height. It is also in the large forest at the top of the Pole Path. Vivax is a very close relative of madake, the leading bamboo in Japan in terms of craft use. The wonderful 'banana yellow' bamboo at the bench down in front came from Napa.

During the construction there was a Buddhist ceremony. The completion of the garden in November of 1987 was celebrated by a Shinto ceremony conducted by Katsuzo Shimizu of Muko.

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