Other classes

A Japanese Touch to Native Garden Design Lecture, slideshow and discussion. Want to bring back the natives? Want to live in nature? Want to go beyond ad-hoc collections of individual plants? Want to create topographic, geologic, hydrologic, climatic, and vegetative garden scenery evoking your favorite natural landscapes? Want to harmonize architecture with its environs? The native garden & dwelling places the world calls Japanese Gardens offer composition principles, materials choices, construction techniques, and maintenance practices you can use in a variety of settings. Learn about these, as well as California's natural landscapes and their Japanese and CA garden analogs, in an introductory survey.

Everything about Evergreens in the Japanese Garden meets in the classroom and the gardens. An introduction to the character uses and care of woody evergreens in Japanese Gardens. Learn planting design, growing environment, physiology, life cycle, varieties, design uses, buying, planting, care, and problems of evergreens. Learn holistic integration of aesthetics, horticulture, and problem solving, especially how to prioritize seemingly contradictory information.

Japanese Gardens in Kyoto - 5 sessions: NE, Central, SE, SW, NW. Lecture & slideshow. Learn the elements of Japanese garden design, construction and maintenance using inspirational images from the instructors' study of gardens in Japan, lecture, chalk board and your own drawings. Topics include: Human use; site characteristics; artistic expression; historical architecture & garden styles; indoor-outdoor relationships; structures; enclosure; topography; uses of stone; water features; plants; design devices such as forced perspective, diagonal and triangular movement, borrowed scenery, hide & real; parallels to other traditions; learning resources and more.

Japanese Maple Aesthetics And Arboriculture is a lecture with hands-on pruning of cut branches. An introduction to the character uses, culture, and pruning of Japanese Maples. Learn about the growing environment, physiology, life cycle, varieties, design uses, buying, planting, culture, and problems of Japanese Maples. Learn holistic integration of aesthetics, sound horticulture, and problem solving, especially how to prioritize seemingly contradictory information. Optional: bring, hand-shears, container Maples and/or photos of Maples.

Pine Tree Aesthetics and Arboriculture. A lecture and seminar in classroom and gardens. An introduction to the character uses, culture, and pruning of Japanese garden Pines. Learn about the growing environment, physiology, life cycle, varieties, design uses, buying, planting, culture, and problems of Japanese garden Pines. Learn holistic integration of aesthetics, sound horticulture, and problem solving, especially how to prioritize seemingly contradictory information. Extra: bring container pines, hand-shears, and/or photos of pines.

Pruning Japanese Gardens in Winter, Spring, Summer or Fall (4 sessions). Lecture, slideshow and discussion. Learn aesthetics and pruning techniques for woody plants used in Japanese-style gardens. Learn species-specific pruning techniques, when and where to use them in Japanese-style garden designs: dry gardens, stroll gardens, hill & pond gardens, tea gardens, courtyard gardens. Learn about Japanese garden design through the lens of aesthetic pruning.

Shin-Boku, Designing the Main Tree in Japanese Gardening. Garden design and aesthetic pruning intersect with the main tree in the Japanese Garden. Learn to identify the focal point in vignettes, and of the entire home-garden composition. Learn tree designs for each. Learn how trees may be trained or re-trained accordingly. Learn tree-stone, tree-water and tree-landform possibilities.

Summer Pruning and Seven Other Ways to Dwarf Trees lecture and seminar meets in the classroom and in the garden. Why do we dwarf trees? Have your trees grown too big for the space they occupy. In your layout, are there some effects that can’t be had without smaller versions of specific trees? Have you discovered that dwarf cultivars of sufficient size are twice the cost and hard to find? That smaller specimens grow too slowly? That the less expensive, faster growing large varieties grow too big or too course? Have your attempts at pruning them been unsuccessful? Learn what can be done.

Lecture and demonstration about the use of bamboo as a landscape plant will focus on some species suitable for the San Francisco Bay Area. Topics will include selection, growth habits, life cycle, design uses, planting, care and control (site, sun/shade, watering, fertilizing, soils, renovation, pruning and division). We will conclude with a walk in the garden to see and discuss some of the bamboo planted there.Hands-on learning, if any, shall be on materials we bring to classroom. Bring your own container plants, cut branches, hand-shears, and/or photos of plants.