I didn't get mine yet, do you have an inside track Keith sorry Richard, sorry not Richard.?

My copy arrived several days ago.

I don't have any comment to make on the rankings, other than being mildly surprised that the list includes several Temple and Public Gardens. I had the impression that Sukiya Living was a concept that was more relevant to residential gardens, than to communal ones? (I suspect that residential gardening is the aspect that a substantial number of readers like to concentrate on, which may account for my having gained that impression.)

I have read it and agree entirely with Herbs comments. I also find it frustrating that the JOJG has wasted another few pages of the publication on meaningless polls when they could be used to inform people about Japanese gardening.

Graham

I agree with you, Graham - why not do individual profiles of gardens each week to explain why they believe these gardens are better than everything else. Instead, we continue to get these elitist, opinionated lists without adequate explanation.

I would have a lot more respect for their publication if they continues to concentrate on the How To... articles and the in-depth explanatory information. I admit that I use a lot of the practical material, but the overall tone of the publication just galls me.

Of course, I subscribe, in part, to see what **** they come up with next!

K. Berry

I find JOJG's garden rankings to be very helpful. One by one I'm slowly visiting all of them. I'm not sure that Sanyo-soh deserves to be ranked as high as 7th. The garden there is pretty bad, but I admit the architecture is fabulous. One of my favorite non-ranked gardens is Shoden-ji, in Northern Kyoto.

I wish JOJG would do MORE, not fewer garden rankings. For example, a ranking of "the best gardens in Northern Japan" would have been helpful on my latest trip. The Shiosai Project is great, but it only lists the 25 top gardens. I hope they expand the list in the future.

Imagine a situation where we, who have never been to any of these places, were set up in some kind of "top ten" grading of a concept that we were not sure of in the first place, wouldn't that lead to some useless waste of time.

A waste of time? No, not at all. I've been to Japan twice in the past few years and I used those rankings to help plan my trips. I've been very pleased with the gardens that JOJG recommended.

I suppose if I were ranking the gardens myself, I'd include Shugaku-in on my personal list. I think JOJG has Nijo-jo ranked too high. Both of the Nijo gardens are great, but the crowds really detract from the whole experience.

So as you disagree with the position of some gardens in the JOJG rankings how do you know that by planning your trips around it you are not missing out on seeing better gardens by simply taking their opinion as the definitive word.

Gardenberry, I agree with you about the **** in JOJG, and I too get it just for the how-to articles. But speaking of such, didn't you find the tone of the latest how-to article a bit, shall we say, un-called-for? If any major professor of mine ever had been that insulting to me, I'd have been to the dean of the department or college so fast they wouldn't have known what hit them! Take it from some one who used to teach, humiliation and verbal abuse are not useful teaching tools!

Fran

Fran -

I'm puzzled. I've read all six of the how-to articles & haven't noticed anything in them that could be taken as insulting. Did you mean to refer to the Mirei Shigemori book review?

Herb

Herb, I'm referring to the article about pruning pines. I'm at home right now, but once I get back to work tomorrow and can get to my copy, I'll get some examples of what I mean and post them.

Fran

This is a big digression from the original discussion, but...

Fran - Oh, I couldn't agree with you more. I felt like I was in grade school getting scolded for writing outside the lines and margins.

Of course, in the perfect world, I could devote hours/days to perfecting my techniques on one tree. Unfortunately, I have 173 trees to prune and only limited time to prune or candle, along with all the other maintenance tasks in my 12-acre garden. With 10-12 unskilled laborers helping me candle, the least destructive thing to do is tell them to do all the candles the same length. It's not a perfect system, but they don't understand and they don't care to understand, so it works for me.

I also crack up at the photo of the person with all their pruning tools arranged neatly across their back. One fall and their spine will be paying the price for the rest of their lives.... I know, the evil streak in me shouldn't take so much glee from someone else's ignorance. Just shows, JOJG is not as perfect as they think.

Hi Gardenberry,
I have just visited your page to see what you did after seeing you posted that you look after 173 trees and I find that you have the same occupation as Niwashisan or as I know him Graham you both look after Japanese gardens,it must be a great feeling going to work every day knowing you are off to a Japanese Garden.
George.

Here is a link that might be useful: George's Japanese Garden

I took another look at that pine pruning article and I didn't find it insulting at all. In fact, I thought it was well-written and very thorough. I particularly liked the section where they listed what appears to be about 70 different pruning techniques. I expect JOJG to be firm about things like pruning standards, and I thought the tone of that article was perfect.

About the Shiosai Project: I've been to Japan each of the past three years, mostly to look at architecture and carpentry. So far I've been impressed with the Shiosai gardens that I've visited. I did find one pretty nice garden that isn't on the list. It is the Nozaki Estate in Okayama Prefecture. I even wrote a note to JOJG suggesting that they profile that house/garden in an upcoming issue.