Our Paul Smith collaboration launched in Japan last week, with an exciting opening at the beautiful Paul Smith shop in Kyoto, before it heads on to Osaka, Nagoya and Tokyo

A week or so before the spring equinox Lucie, Yui and Simon from Niwaki Chiltern Street assembled in Southeast London for a working visit to the Horniman Museum Garden. At the invitation of Head of Horticulture Errol Reuben Fernandes, we were there to help his team of permanent staff and itinerant volunteers with a time-consuming seasonal task: cutting back the Grasslands Garden.

Metaphorically speaking, that is. We revisit our trip to Hokkaido to explore Tokachi Millennium Forest for Niwaki Field Report No.1.

READ MORE: Niwaki has partnered with eponymous luxury women’s fashion brand Ulla Johnson to create a highly desirable ikebana kit, complete with everything you need to start making beautiful and stylish floral display: just add flowers and water.

Escape the crushing reality of January and transport yourself back in time to join Jake for couple of days wandering around Kyoto. Make yourself a fresh cup of tea, raid the remains of the Quality Street and read on:

READ MORE: If you’ve visited Niwaki Chiltern Street it’s possible you have already encountered Sarah in her role as part-time sales assistant, dispenser of experience-based tool advice and all-round mood improver. We’re lucky to have her, even if it is just one day a week: when she’s not helping out in the shop Sarah can be found teaching RHS Level 2 Horticulture, gardening professionally across North London and, when time and weather permits, pottering about on her allotment.

READ MORE: One of the best bits about manning the stand at the Chelsea Flower Show* is the opportunity to hear how customers use the products they already own and to demonstrate which useful tools they could or should be using, but at present do not use, either because they don’t know they exist, they don’t know what do with them, or they imagine that, because the tools have been designed with specific uses in mind, using them is too specialist an art and best left to the professionals.

We’ve been making clothes that look great and work well both in and out of the garden for a few years now, so we were very pleased to discover Oliver Spencer shares our passion for utility, style and, crucially, gardening.

Following on from our successful collaboration in 2022, Oliver Spencer and Niwaki are excited to present some new and updated styles for this season’s offering.

If there’s one thing that unites winter festivities across the world, whether it’s Christmas in Dorset or New Year in Hokkaido, it’s the preparation of food to share with friends and family. And nothing makes prepping a meal easier and more pleasurable than a good quality knife. Everybody knows Niwaki does great garden gear, but did you know we also stock some very fine Japanese kitchen knives?

If you’re looking to upgrade your arsenal this Christmas, or you’ve already experienced Japanese knife quality and want to share your discovery with a friend or loved one, may we humbly present for your consideration a selection of rather good knives from our ever-expanding collection?

Gardeners, craftspeople, bodgers, dreamers and flaneurs of all persuasions – suit up!

Of all the tropes and supposed characteristics of the Japanese way of life to have lodged in the Western consciousness, few have gained more traction – cemented in our brains by a hit book and TV series – than the notion of Japan as a land of uncluttered tidiness.

A quick visit to one of the charming but somewhat chaotic blacksmith’s workshops in Niigata would soon put paid to the idea that all Japanese are up to speed with this concept. That’s not to say there isn’t an underlying sense of order in such places: the functional simplicity of the secateurs and other fine products they create arises, in part, from the craftsman’s familiarity with the materials and tools of the trade, and these must be in the right place at the right time in the right condition. But Zen-like spaces these workshops are not.

Like most people, here at Niwaki we vacillate between the two positions. On one hand we love the sight of a tidy garden shed or a freshly clipped hedge, but on the other hand, like most gardeners, we have an ever-growing stack of broken plant pots that we’re keeping just in case, and let’s not mention the disorder and confusion that has taken hold in the back of the Niwaki Land Rover.

Whatever your take on all this, if you’ve got tools you need somewhere to store them and maybe a way to transport them, and we have several stylish new solutions to these age-old problems. We can’t guarantee you’ll achieve a higher spiritual plane as you rearrange your bits and pieces, but you can at least sleep well knowing you’ll be able to lay your hands on that spare spring for your Niwaki GR Pro Clippers or your well-used Niwaki Creanmate just when you need them (assuming you can remember where you’ve put the Tool Box itself).

Available in three sizes and two colours, these fine receptacles for stuff are smart enough to keep around the home – after all, it’s not just tools that need stashing – but tough enough to keep handy in a Landy and use non-stop in a workshop.

Click any photo to inspect the range.

On a clear, bright September morning, with the sun just warming the red bricks and stucco Neptune gargoyles of the handsome mansion block across the road, Niwaki Chiltern Street officially opened its doors to gardening aficionados, seekers of considered tools and accessories, denim freaks, and anyone else drawn in by the sheer elegance of its Jones Neville-crafted interior. We hope you will pay us a visit soon, if not today, to see the shop for yourself – we’re bursting with pride and can’t wait to show you around – but in the meantime, please let us whet your appetite with some information about how to find us and what to expect.

Although aimed at beginners, seasoned old pros should find something useful here too, and at the very least enjoy tut-tutting and disagreeing, for the first rule of box clipping is there are no rules in box clipping.

Last October, dodging typhoons, we found ourselves in Kyoto. Enquiries were made, Kimura san, Japanese gardener and friend, obliged. Hence a day filming at the Keihanna Commemorative Park, somewhere between Kyoto and Nara.

Join us as we scale the peaks of Kongo san, an unspectacular mountain in Osaka. Cable cars are acceptable.