Why I Oughta...

I've posted about the street trees of Tokyo a few times here on the blog.  In those posts, I've talked about the hard pruning that they do to *some* of the trees, how others have a more columnar nature to them and what species they might be (a lot of Ginkos!).  On my most recent trip, I walked down a fancy street in Ginza and saw some trees in full foliage.  And these trees aren't Ginkos.  Here's a close up of the leaves of the same tree you see above: Looking through the list of popular trees on The Street Trees of Tokyo site , I made it all the way down to below the top 30 to find what I think these trees are: Pretty sure it is a  Popular .   And...the Lombardy Popular is columnar variety . 

With multiple visits to Tokyo now under my belt, I have come to realize that there are plenty of things that I am drawn to during my stays including the hospitality, the crazy products, work (of course) and maybe most significantly:  their horticulture.  Mostly their trees. I've posted a bunch about the trees of Tokyo starting with my first visit where I saw the Cherry trees in full blossom in 2017 .  Earlier this year, I posted some photos from a Spring visit where I saw some workers pruning street trees into a columnar shape and had the good fortune of seeing the deciduous trees without their leaves.  I also posted this photo of a carefully crafted pine tree outside of the Peninsula Hotel close to the office I was visiting.   The pruning they do starts young as I found a few very thin pine trees close to a building that have begun their pruning/training.   And...where I saw the most interesting collection of trees (mostly White and Black...

This is a photo I took from my cab one early morning that shows off some very large street trees in Tokyo that have been heavily pruned.  I've posted about street trees like this before here .  But, if you look closely behind those larger parkway or street trees, you'll see some smaller, very thin conifer trees that have been trained or pruned to be long and leggy in the style of the larger spruce/pine trees that I saw in the Imperial Gardens.  Remember that photo of a beautiful tree that I posted from outside the Peninsula Hotel ?  I think these little trees might be on their way towards something like that one:  a big, strong singular trunk that can be wired to create some of that curvature and longer limbs with needles clustered on their tips.  Scroll down on this post from my last trip to Tokyo where I visited the Imperial Gardens and you can see more of these mature conifer trees. #8 on my 2019 Garden To-Do List is to plant more conifers ....

This is the view that I was greeted with most of the days I was in the office in Tokyo doing meetings and client work on my trip in February.  In the foreground where you see the yellowish/tanish ground is the Kōkyo-gaien or "Outer Garden" of the Tokyo Imperial Palace.  If you move your eyes more towards the upper portion of the photo, you'll see the buildings of the Imperial Palace grounds with the large stone driveway area in between the two.  The public grounds is the part that mere mortals like me are able to wander around in, but I think you can make your way around the Palace grounds and take in some nature.  Due to time constraints and uncertainty, I was only able to enjoy the front, public outer gardens you see with the yellow/tan grounds.   And that part was pretty spectacular.  There's tons of things written on the Web about the plants/trees and animals that live in and around the Imperial Garden, but you can start with this entry on...

Just a couple of days ago, I  posted about some Tokyo Street Trees and how the mature trees in parkways were being heavily pruned into a columnar habit and it seemed that for the younger ones that they had planted recently, they had been selected trees that appeared to have a more natural columnar habit.  But, there are so many interesting trees around Ginza, Tokyo that I saw and this post hopefully will show even more of the diversity of both species and habits.  This tree above is outside the front entrance of The Peninsula Hotel Ginza in Tokyo  and caught my attention due to the training the trunk received to give it that curvy-nature.  I have been spending a lot of time on YouTube watching bonsai videos and learning all about how bonsai owners use wire to train the trunk and limbs to create these curves and add interest to the overall tree.  I can't help but wonder if this large tree - which I think is a Spruce or maybe a Pine - was trained with...