April 8th, 2014
Homma Kancho building the new bridge for the garden
The Nippon Kan Japanese gardens were created 19 years ago. With the budget we had to work with at the time, most of the plants were $10 plants we found in the “reduced for sale” bins at the local hardware store. The garden is decorated with a foundation of large Colorado boulders and has ponds and a wooden bridge. Over the years the garden had grown thick, the bridge too old and dangerous to cross and the ivy had overgrown over the windows.
Morihiro Saito Shihan advised me when the garden had just been planted, “You need to have someone else trim the plants in your garden for you”. When I asked why he replied, “The owner of a garden will not be able to cut the plants back as much as they need to be cut to make the garden grow beautifully”.
These many years later I realize that his words were true. It took a team of people over one month this spring to complete all of the maintenance the garden needed, including a new bridge for the pond.
Dismantling the old bridge
Putting the new bridge to put in place; it was HEAVY!
The new bridge in the snow