Tokyo DIY Gardening Hands-on gardening for a crowded city
Apartment Block Garden Fixtures
Affixing small hangers and substantial brackets to increase the plant population.
Powerpole Hanging Basket
S-hook and hanger on powerpole climbing peg makes for a stable hanging garden.
Memorial Garden in Neighbourhood Park
This well tended local neighbourhood park garden is actually a quiet memorial to a deceased spouse.
Article: Tokyo Fruit Layers
“Understanding fruit layers can help make urban life more social, resilient and delicious”
Organic Decoration
Out of season fox face tied to a tree add a splash of colour to a central Harajuku street.
Protect your Seedlings
Inventive and strongly practical use/reuse of a familiar and cheap mass-produced item.
Tree Breaks out of Pot and into Soil
I wish that governments and residents would begin to de-pave Tokyo, and it’s great to see that domestic plants are not waiting for us to act.
Pansies in a Sidewalk Crack
In the world’s largest mega-city, even a crack in the sidewalk can be a place to grow a flower.
Riverbank Community Garden in Tsukishima
A great use of dead space, allowing people in a crowded neighborhood to have outdoor plants.
Green Corner
A great way to create extra gardening space without encroaching on the narrow street or cramped inner courtyard.
Presentation: FIXING the Neighbourhood
Presentation for “Transforming Neighbourhoods – Tokyo/Berlin”
PET Bottle Plot
It’s interesting to see a material that usually acts as a pest deterrent incorporated into the construction of the garden.
Curbside Succulent Space in Concrete and Rocks
A bed of succulents created in the tightest of spaces – A sensitive, practical and elegant solution.
Why are some neighborhood parks so sad?
Many of Tokyo’s residential neighborhood parks are poorly maintained and under-used……
Morning glory green curtain
All the apartments have nets, perhaps to deter birds, yet few are so well used.
Second Floor Garden
I love the variety of plants, and the way the garden adds onto what is already there.
Tsukishima Green Alleys & Construction
Old and new, green alleys and wide boulevards, wood houses and new construction.
Lush Potted Alley
Permanence of impermanent structure; Relaxed hiding space; Natural cooling; Shade.
Sensitive Block Wall
Although the trees are long dead, the wall reminds us of a garden once treasured.
Informal Florist
Relaxed, honesty-box style informal florist makes a delightful addition to an afternoon stroll.
Summer is Loquat Season in Tokyo
It’s great to see such huge trees full of orange fruit and accessible from the street.
Conjunctive Gardening
Pots, blocks, dirt and plants sit, stand on and burrow over and into each other.
No Parking in Potplants
A bit of greenification helps keep this inner-city commerce spot free of parked bicycles.
Mosquito Repellent Vase in Park Toilet
Another example of the hand made aspects of Japanese mass-made toilets.
School children give pansies to Metro station
How cool that the students are offering the station something alive.
PopcornHomestead Curtain
Prolific and generous Tokyo gardener Joan Bailey is documenting her new and improved green curtain.
Wire Pot Plant Hangers
Wire twisted into pot plant holders to decorate roadside residential fencing.
Storing Cabbages, Drying Shoes
Metal window ledge provides ample space for both storing cabbages and drying shoes.
[Map Detail] Tokyo DIY Gardening Workshop
![[Map Detail] Tokyo DIY Gardening Workshop](http://tokyo-diy-gardening.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/map_thumb.jpg)
A small sample of detail images from the Tokyo map created during last August’s Tokyo-DIY-Gardening workshop.
Tree Supported Washing Line
Trees support a bamboo pole based washing line construction in Tokyo’s Tachikawa suburbs.
A tree of death outside Family Mart
a tree of death, made of dozens of cigarette cartons and festooned with Christmas lights
Street Corner Tomato Construction
“…perhaps disregard for existing structures is a better description, as the rods pierce the old corrugated plastic awning to stabilize the structure”
Breeze Block Parking Pots
Breeze blocks that form the edging of a carpark double as sturdy plant pots.
Blooming Corner Container Garden
Made of a whole variety of containers – some purchased, some styrofoam coolers put to fresh use – it was a bright spot on an otherwise cement-filled busy street.
Beer Crate Roof Garden
Transferring the principles of the Tokyo curbside garden a few meters skyward.
Classic Pot Garden in Shiba/Mita
Whether intentional or not, the impressive scale of this garden creates a natural security system…..
Curbside Embedded Pots
What made this particular garden stand out is the fact that it is composed entirely of plants still in their garden center pots and plastic containers.
Eye-level Pot Plant Rack
Precarious yet thoughtful, this construction does not intrude into the narrow thoroughfare any further than the curb line.
A Field of Pots
A love affair with dirt knows no bounds, rules, and follows a logic of its own. Right on, I say!
Wildness in Nishi Azabu Juban
There is something comforting to feel wildness in the center of the city
Fishing Spot Garden
This example made me realize that I’ve been overlooking a whole species of non-plant-related informal city gardens that still display care for, and attachment to, place.
S-Hooks are Tokyo’s super glue
this hanging pot relies on an S-hook to attach itself to the existing built environment
Pots Trump Cars in Kokubunji
Space for gardening more important that private transport in a leafy Tokyo suburb.
Makeshift plastic rope trellis for morning glory
Is this a new trend? I am looking forward to watching these plants grow this summer.
Dead Space Brick Planter
A few bricks in the right place can help turn dead into living + edible space.
Pot Plant Corner in Nakano
Resembling a battleship plowing through the water, this garden takes over almost the entire street frontage of the building.
Tomatoes and Rice on Harajuku Curb
While the resultant rice will probably not be enough for a meal, this experiment adds a different element to the usual curbside vege-garden fare.
Replacing Dead Urban Spaces with Living Habitat
Contrary to popular opinion, cities only become devoid of natural life by active suppression…..
Summer Vegetables on the Sidewalk
I love how seasonal and impromptu this vegetable gardening is. A city that’s safe for vegetables and plants is one that also welcomes people.
Lush Green Wall Collage
Unplanned and hectic but built up slowly over many years. Temporary in form and materials but not in presence.
Secure Pot Plant Construction
There’s no shame in tying a few pots up on your wall with a bit of old rope!
Gardening for Strangers in Tokyo
What surprises me still are Tokyo residents’ ingenuity and passion for cultivating plants and community in a crowded, over-built city…..
Flower Breaking Through Pavement
How did it get there? How does it survive the city’s relentless drive to bury every grain of soil?
Drunk Salaryman Passed Out in Flower Bed
There seems something almost poetic about the juxtaposition of office worker, flower and soil.
A Public Train Set in Zoushigaya
A public train set in a rather barren raised garden on a small street across from a cemetery and the music school.
Garden Space in Stacked Bricks
An arrangement of pot plants is given shape and presence by a brick border.
Collaborative Mental Mapping
Mapping the real and imagined green spaces of a megacity requires all kinds of junk…
Tethered Flower Driveway
High-priced residence, luxury car, beautiful flower, and humble maintenence method.
Let’s cover Tokyo in winter lavendar
Covering a Tokyo building with lavender plants, or creating small lavender city farms . . .
No space for fruit tree? Check this out!
So many city dwellers think they have no space to grow anything. Recently I posted photos of a persimmon tree near my apartment that is three stories tall and full of fruit. I went back to take a shot of its trunk. Actually, it turns out that there are two trees growing in a space [...]
Intoxicating night scent of Angel’s Trumpet
hardy and decorative, with a shamanistic function in its native Amazon habitat
“Do You Really Like Living Here?” A Foreigner’s Perspective on Tokyo
I cannot discern if this question expresses national modesty, a sense of inferiority, or ignorance
Potted plant in bicycle basket
Did the bicycle owner leave the potted plant in the basket, or did a stranger deposit it there?
Yotsuya Dead, Green, Space
Gregory Robertson is interested in this dead, green, wild space in Yotsuya….
No-Earth Gardening
“I have constructed quite a delightful garden with no actual access to the earth”
Fall perennial border in pots on curbside
despite the lack of ground soil and space . . I admire the gardener’s generosity to passing pedestrians and bicyclists
Orange tree by the Kanda River
. . . the Kanda River viewed from Nakano Fujimichio, with an orange tree in the foreground and the skyscrapers of Nishi Shinjuku in the background
Guest photo from Hiyoko Imai
Much of the daily fabric of urban life, instead, feels like this photo: a bunch of stuff bolted on to other stuff
Tokyo DIY Gardening Interactive Review
“With a single click visitors can plunge from a birds-eye view of Tokyo to street level for a stroll through a tunnel of blooming cherries..”
Beloperone guttata or little shrimp plant (コエビソウ) growing between 2 walls
Tokyo’s ample rainfall allows plants to thrive in the most unlikely places.
Fall fruit growing in Tokyo’s back streets
Recently, I have noticed oranges, persimmons, and even pomegranate growing in my neighbors’ tiny gardens and balconies
Spider lilies are everywhere in Tokyo during fall
They are extremely hardy, and pop up everywhere in the fall on green stalks with no leaves.
Small green curtain at factory car shop
It’s great to see people make use of work time and space for some vegetable gardening.
Trained Creeping Fence
Coffee shop owner appropriates dead space, fence and creeper to create green lane.
Protecting or Fortifying?
Innocently protecting weeds, or fortifying scarce urban space against undesired use?
Joseph Tame’s Gardening: The Birds
Despite living but a few kilometres from Shibuya, in the mornings, with nothing but the sound of birds and the wind in the trees, you can imagine that you’re far from the city, somewhere out in the English countryside.
Joseph Tame’s Gardening
Doing a little gardening brings me a great deal of pleasure, and helps me feel a lot more in touch with the environment within which I live.
Joseph Tame’s Gardening: The Pineapple
I’ve always dreamed of growing my own pineapples – and so when I saw a plant for sale at our local plant shop I just had to buy it…..
Expressways divide neighborhoods and repel people
These massive structures are the opposite of the small lanes that make Tokyo feel so village-like and livable.
Wildness beside a busy subway platform
There is something beautiful to glimpse this inefficient use of space and so much lush greenery in the midst of a dense city
Tree Supported Washing Line 002
Trees support a laundry pole construction in Tokyo’s Tachikawa suburbs.
Hanging plant decorates fence in front of empty lot
My guess is that both of these plant interventions. . . were created by neighbors getting tired of seeing the empty lot and its weeds
Shade for Tomatoes
A row of tomato vines protected from the harsh Tokyo summer with a whole lot of umbrellas.
Tree as Dump
The tree closest to the road becomes the default dumping ground for rubbish from the rest of the site.
Tethered Bush in Packing Strap
A mix of respect for plant life and hassle involved with disposing of plant cuttings?
Public Seating Rock Garden
Unusable public seating repurposed as rock garden at Mt. Takao, West Tokyo.
Aerial Climber
The role of built environmental artifacts/components will increasingly be that of trellis.
Neighborhood sunflowers
I love how these sunflowers are growing at the intersection of two small streets, and how the round flowers echo the larger, convex street mirror. The flowers grow in a tiny scrap of soil just outside the wall around a residence. After preparing the image, I realized that I took a similar photo last year. [...]
[CITY FORM] Draft Photo/Text Collage Excerpt
![[CITY FORM] Draft Photo/Text Collage Excerpt](http://tokyo-diy-gardening.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/cityform_thumb.jpg)
“..layer by layer, the modern and present-day cities of Tokyo were built…..urban development took place around many scattered nuclei.”
Elegant Nezu Museum garden
enchanted by how the light struck this worn boat, the plants growing in its bow, and the illusion of . . .
Azabu Juban’s Kakuremino bar defined by street tree
this narrow Nishi Azabu Juban bar is defined by the curbside street tree
Water Garden
“If you want to try gardening with a difference but are pushed for space go for a water garden”
Baby bitter melon in September typhoon
A baby bitter melon in the rain, with its flower still attached
Beautiful water plants in bowl outside Shizen
A simple bowl with plants can really add visual impact to a central city sidewalk.
Shinjuku Ward Office greening
sidewalk awning with minimal space and maintenance, impacts thousands coming to ward office
Semi-wild, semi-cultivated space in Yoyogi
in between two train tracks, an elevated overpass, and a convenience store . . .
[Photo Update] Tokyo DIY Gardening Workshop
![[Photo Update] Tokyo DIY Gardening Workshop](http://tokyo-diy-gardening.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/3331_work_thumb2.jpg)
Some photos from the great map which all the participants created.
[Review] Tokyo DIY Gardening Workshop
![[Review] Tokyo DIY Gardening Workshop](http://tokyo-diy-gardening.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/3331_work_thumb1.jpg)
Starting with a plain sheet of paper, with a single green circle upon it (yes the yamanote line) the group began to map out Tokyo….
Security or Stabilization? 003
This one looks as if it is secured to keep the tree from obstructing the front entrance.
Concrete Curbside Planter
This concrete curbside planter adds a permanent garden in the narrow space between wall and curb.
Securing Pots on a Ledge
Wire twisted around trellis at one end is threaded through the pots to create an intergrated, secure whole.
Roof Garden in Waseda
I needed a telescope to get a REALLY good look, which would have felt a bit like being a garden stalker….
Rose Bush Takes Over House
The inside must be filled with delicious scent of the roses and feel miles away from the city life just outside the door.
Narrow Trackside Colour in Rocks
Rocks and concrete blocks mark out narrow marginal space for a bright shock of colour.
Small building in Shinjuku covered in vines
This small building in a Shinjuku commercial district is buried in vines
Dense and mature sidewalk garden in Chiyoda
The planting is amazingly thick, creating a green wall between the sidewalk and the large boulevard. . .
More balcony-grown baby watermelon
I am surprised at the success of this vertical, balcony watermelon