Going into the Island Garden or Peace Garden, you will notice some new additions for New Year’s and this winter season. The decorative elements we have added are called ‘kadomatsu’. The kadomatsu can be found at the Peace Garden’s northern entrance and the Island Garden’s southern entrance. I will share some behind-the-scenes footage of the design process. 

Kadomatsu translates to “gate pine”, which gives a pretty clear indication of one of the most important plants used and the locations in which they are placed. Our kadomatsu placed near the Peace Garden is more extensive, and we chose the location because it is a more formal entrance to the Island Garden. It is a little more “grand” than the humble bridge that transitions the Elk Garden into the Island Garden. For this reason, there are smaller kadomatsu at the southern entrance. The goal was to respect the bridge as an entrance but reserve the more eye-catching displays for an area that gives the entrance a prominent feeling.

The main components of kadomatsu are bamboo, pine, and flowering plum branches. Unfortunately, our cold weather prevents us from being able to use the flowering plums for this display. Instead of the plum branches, we use different ornamental branches commonly used for winter floral displays. This year, we went with Hawthorne branches in the larger Kadomatsu. The Hawthorne trees retain their bright red berries in January and make an excellent choice for the time of year. The smaller kadomatsu uses the purple beautyberry that grows in the Island Garden. Although the berries fade as we go into winter, we collect them earlier and preserve them using flower spray/anti-transpirant. The spray prevents moisture loss in the berries, causing them to become wrinkled as they dry out. The pine branches used were much less work to collect because they were cuttings removed from the red pines in the Island Garden during their annual pruning. Another downside of our climate is that we cannot grow larger varieties of bamboo in the cold; we have to source it from the south. Buying the bamboo was just the beginning of the journey of putting everything together. You will notice the bamboo has oblique cuts made on the top. We accomplished this by using a bamboo saw (a very fine tooth saw) and making the cuts very slowly. Using power tools or trying to rush the process often results in some bamboo fibers catching and causing tearing around the cut. It was a steep learning curve, and the cuts were imperfect, but the final product looked solid for our first attempt. 

The overlooked aspects of the kadomatsu displays are the rope work and the composition of the pots. The pots are cylindrical and typically wrapped in grass/straw. Ours use woven beach mats for ease of construction. There are often “skirts” around the base of kadomatsu pots, but our weather prevents us from using traditional materials. They tend to get battered by our intense winters. Around our beach mat-wrapped pots, you will find a fancy decorative knot shaped like a plum flower. These are quite the struggle to learn to tie. The kadomatsu at Wellfield only have plum knots due to the help from Rettig Garden Fostering and Stewardship. You need five hands to get it right before learning the knots to a proficient level. It is a difficult task, and I tied one wonky plum knot that did not make it to the kadomatsu pots. The last bit of rope work on the displays is called “otoko-musubi.” This knot has a more practical purpose. It is the knot traditionally used for the bamboo fences commonly seen in Japanese gardens and the knot we use to tie the bamboo braces to newly planted trees. For kadomatsu, we use this knot to keep the bamboo tied together.

Cody Hoff, Lead Horticulturist