Takeshi Nagasaki – Rebuilding the Roots: A Garden Recovery Project in Tohoku

A collective of gardeners (niwashi 庭師) named Niwa Japan has been involved in a great variety of projects, from restoring ancient gardens to landscaping festivals.

 

In 2011 Takeshi Nagasaki realised that gardeners could play a vital role  in the rebuilding process in Tohoku. So he called Niwa Japan, and they began a new project, ‘The Japan Quake Recovery Project Niwa Japan,’ aimed at remoulding the devastated landscape left by last year’s earthquake and tsunami.

 

Beyond clearing the debris left behind by the disaster, Niwa Japan plots and plants new greenery that can flourish in the empty spaces left by the tragedy. Embracing all manner of individual projects, the work is both practical and symbolic, from the replanting of a single tree in a house in Sendai City, to rebuilding entire neighbourhood’s green spaces.

 

The Niwa Japan mission is simple –  to restore people’s connections to nature. Working from the same mud that has inundated and destroyed so much, the project is a hands-on regenerative process. Nagasaki sees the potential for a natural disaster to be followed by a natural rebirth, an opportunity for planting the seeds of Tohoku’s future. Giving new life to the region’s gardens, Niwa Japan is rebuilding a central element of the Japanese household.

 

For more information about Niwa Japan, please visit their blog (Japanese only).

Takeshi Nagasaki was born in 1970 in Nara, Japan. After studying atTokyo University of the Arts, he took a two-year sabbatical in Spain where he learned oil painting. On returning to Japan in 1992, he began woodcut printing and sculpture and started learning gardening independently. In 1997, Nagasaki formed the company N-tree, to foster a new vision of landscape design. Based in London from 2007 to 2010, Nagasaki relocated to Japan in 2011.Travelling and publishing widely, his design inspiration is firmly rooted in the landscapes and inspiration of Japan.

 

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