Book Reviews

Tokachi Millennium Forest: Pioneering a New Way of Gardening with Nature by Dan Pearson with Midori Shintani

February 27, 2021

The winters are long and harsh on Hokkaido, the northernmost island of the Japanese archipelago.  By September the leaves have turned color and snow will often linger on the ground throughout April.  Yet, the island’s landscape is lush during the summer months, when the hot sun, abundant moisture and reliably cool nighttime temperatures combine to create an accelerated growing season.

It is in this challenging landscape that the Tokachi Millennium Forest has emerged as one of the most exciting conservation/stewardship initiatives in recent years.  Is it a park? Is it a garden? Is it a forest? The brainchild of newspaper business entrepreneur Mitsushige Hayashi, it is all and more—a dynamic landscape that fuses Eastern and Western design sensibilities to reconnect people with nature in a transformative manner.

In Tokachi Millennium Forest, British garden and landscape designer Dan Pearson and Japanese head gardener Midori Shintani share the story of the site’s evolution and their ongoing collaboration to assure its success. Hayashi purchased the property just over twenty years ago,  as an investment in the future. His goals to offset the carbon footprint of his business and prevent loss of habitat to agriculture and development were matched by his audacious desire to create a landscape that would be sustainable for a thousand years.

On every level and with every detail, the Tokachi Millennial Forest is envisioned as an environment in which the natural world, in all its intimacy, is revealed.  At a time when Japan’s population is increasingly urbanized, the park provides an opportunity to reconnect to the traditional Japanese view of nature in which spiritual powers infuse animate and inanimate objects.  Its purpose is to inspire and educate to create a movement to build a harmonious relationship between mankind and the future.

A Master Plan by the Japanese firm Takano Landscape Planning developed a framework to create a park on the property. Pearson, celebrated for his naturalistic perennial plantings, was brought onboard to create a Garden Master Plan with the intent of adding another layer to the original design vision and enhancing its accessibility for visitors.  His solution, a narrative of cohesive experiences appropriate to their settings and illustrative of something specific to the site, was placed within the context of a “walk that would reveal the park in an intimate way as the visitor moved through it.”

Testing the idea of what a garden is in the conventional sense while respecting the spirit of the place, Pearson designed a series of garden spaces that drew inspiration from the surrounding landscape.  The Earth Garden, the largest earth forming project he had ever done, provided a transition between the forest and the Hidaka mountains, enticing the visitor to move further into the park.  The two-acre Meadow Garden, the first naturalistic garden of its type in Japan, references shakkei, to incorporate the background landscape of the mountains into its composition, reframing it through the plantings to create intimate spaces to draw the world of plants into a new focus.

Viewed as a grand gesture, the Meadow Garden interprets the woodland floor in naturalistic plantings, a concept new to Japan.  Planted with thirty-five thousand perennials, this is a highly dynamic and complex undertaking in which nineteen distinct planting mixes were combined in a deliberately random matrix, anchored by the surrounding trees, shrubs and key perennials.  A chapter is devoted to the meadow plantings, detailing the plants used in each mix.  These are also included in the end notes.

Shintani arrived at the Tokachi Millennium Forest in 2008 as the Meadow Garden was being planted. As head gardener, she works in close partnership with Pearson. Their respect for each other and devotion to this particular place has evolved into a deep friendship.  Her voice is heard throughout the book in a series of evocative essays that provide insight into the traditional Japanese view of nature and the experience of being in, rather than creating, the landscape. Shintani’s hope is that “the garden becomes a place where someone’s heart returns, and where someone finds their own wild.”

A series of productive gardens offer a traditional view of horticulture.  Included is a kitchen garden where food is grown for the Garden Cafe, augmented by wild food foraged from the forest.  There is a rose garden, planted with forty varieties that illustrate the flower’s cultivation as a domestic plant through selection and horticulture, an orchard, and trial beds. Seasonal offerings from all of the productive gardens, illustrating the Japanese concept of shun, are used in the cafe for a farm-to-table experience. The entire property is managed organically.

Pearson knew from the onset that working with the spirit of the place would humble.  While changes to the landscape required boldness due to the property’s vast scale, a sense of intimacy was also needed to allow opportunities for personal reflection and discovery.  Ensuring the park’s long-term viability requires that an enduring relationship with place be established with its ultimate success depending on future generations.  This is not unlike the planet we live on and one can only hope that this particular project, in this particular place, will serve as a model for many others.

This film, by Cornucopia Productions, was commissioned by Dan Pearson Studio.

This review appeared in Leaflet: A Massachusetts Horticultural Society Publication, February 2021.

Copyright © 2021 Patrice Todisco — All Rights Reserved

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  • Patterson Webster March 10, 2021 at 3:37 pm

    You’ve written a wonderful review of this book. I had seen pieces about it but nothing until your review tempted me to read the book. Now I am eager to do so.

    • Patrice March 11, 2021 at 12:06 pm

      I am so glad that you enjoyed the review and encourage you to read the book. The project provides a model for others to employ in the creation of public spaces however they are defined – parks, gardens, or forests.