Niwaki Blog: Jake’s take on cloud pruning, organic topiary and all things tree.

In a list of big excitements that have befallen me of late (starting with the birth of our boy Digby more than two years ago now, then moving into our new home after more than a year and a half of planning and builder hassle, and finally Arsenal coming from behind to beat Barcelona 2-1 at the… Read More

Just done some work on a hedge in Normandy - that's Normandy, Surrey, not Normandy, Missouri. Quite an established box hedge that the owner, a painter, wanted to make more of a feature of, but also to preserve its function of a border hedge between them and the neighbours. It had one or two holes… Read More

The Mail on Sunday gave our Okatsune secateurs top marks, 5 out of 5, best in category, in their super sexy spring secateur spectacular this weekend. We've had a bit of a rush. Telegraph readers already knew that, of course, ever since Bunny Guinness described them as life changing some time ago… Read More

Following the shocking and terrible news over the weekend, friends and customers have kindly been in touch asking about Keiko and her family - fortunately her family are in Osaka to the south, but needless to say this will affect the whole country for a long time to come. Our thoughts are with… Read More

Not sure what 'it' is exactly, but there you go. Just got three new Silky saws in stock, all with fantastic names: The Ginga (fine teeth for bamboo sawing) Gomtaro Ringo (for apple tree pruning, with a very natty wooden scabbard) and the remarkable Genki Temagari (for chopping down trees) Have a… Read More

It always amazes me how effective just one cut can be sometimes. There's this pine on the bank above the tennis court at Harvard farm that has been crying out to me a lot recently. Today it cried a bit louder, and I finally got round to responding. Not sure what pine it is - that's not really the… Read More

Organic Topiary When asked what kind of work I do, I sometimes struggle to reduce the answer to a descriptive, eloquent and reasonably concise answer: well, it’s Japanese-style topiary, which is known as niwaki, which means garden tree, which really means pruning and training plants into stylized… Read More

Today, whilst out and about, I came across these weird bits of old hedge, nicely clipped into stranded topiary blobs. Think they must be holly. I like what I'm guessing is the graze line - the high tide mark, the visual contrast between the teeth of mammals and those of hedge cutters. If they were… Read More