Reclaiming the Main Gate: April 2026 at the Japanese Garden of Peace

Sunday 26 April brought fourteen Friends to the Japanese Garden of Peace in Hammersmith Park under unbroken sunshine, five of them joining us for the first time. We were also pleased to welcome back a group of students from a Japanese school near Slough, on their second visit this year. The sakura was at peak bloom, with circles of pink petals fallen on the lawns beneath each tree, and the warm spring weekend the day before had left the garden busy with visitors — and, as we discovered on arrival, with quite a lot of litter for us to deal with first.

Across the garden | A morning's litter pick

Before any tools came out, Friends worked through the lawns, beds, and perimeter areas to collect what had been left behind on Saturday. Drinks cans, food wrappers, and bits of plastic were spread broadly enough that we needed to cover the whole garden rather than focus on one corner. By the time we were done, the morning's haul filled a healthy run of black waste sacks. Less satisfying than horticultural work, but a necessary first step before we could begin anything else.

Mature trees and sakura | Removing suckers and epicormic growth

Two of the garden's mature trees and three of the sakura had developed a dense ring of suckers and epicormic growth around their bases over the winter. Left in place, this kind of growth diverts water and nutrients away from the main canopy, encourages disease at the trunk base, and gradually disrupts the natural form of the tree. Friends worked round each one removing the new shoots cleanly at the collar, taking care to avoid damaging the bark. The trunks now stand cleanly out of the lawn again, with no clutter at the base.

Streams and ponds | Weeding the banks and stepping stones

A small team turned to the pond banks, stream margins, and the gaps between the stepping stones, all of which had filled in with weeds during the run-up to the season. Most of the work was done by hand to ensure the roots came up cleanly rather than leaving stubs to regrow. Particular attention went to areas where the new growth had begun to crowd or obscure our intended planting along the water's edge. Modest as it sounds, this kind of edge maintenance makes a real difference to how the streams and ponds read as a designed feature rather than a wild one.

Main gate | The start of a sustained effort

The strip of garden inside the railings to the right of the main gate has been quietly running wild for years. It hadn't been touched in any sustained way in a very long time, and what should be a clear stretch of planting had become a mess of ivy, dead wood, and self-sown growth tangled through and over the existing shrubs and trees. Sunday's session was the first push at putting that right. Friends pruned overgrown trees, took out one young tree that had seeded itself in the wrong place, and stripped back ivy and dead growth from the railings inwards. There is still a great deal more to do — we expect this area to occupy us for at least another two sessions — but the first significant progress in years has now been made.

Stone basin area | Continuing low bamboo removal

Behind the stone basin area, work continued on the gradual removal of a stand of low bamboo, picking up a project a corporate group started for us last year and which we ourselves came back to at the March session. Bamboo of this kind is slow to clear because the rhizomes spread well beyond the visible canes, so each session takes out another section rather than the whole. Today's work moved further into the stand and the area is now noticeably more open than it was a month ago.

Bamboo | Limited pruning amid an uptick in breakage

Bamboo work was deliberately light this session. Most of what was cut had already been broken — and that, unfortunately, is what we wanted to flag. The warmer weather has brought more visitors through the garden, and with them an uptick in casual damage to the canes. This is a real concern for our cloud-pruned bunches, which take several seasons of patient shaping to reach their current form and cannot easily be rebuilt once disrupted. To compensate, we will be leaving more new shoots to grow than we normally would, on the basis that some will need to take the place of any further canes lost over the coming months.

Thanks | A productive April at the Japanese Garden of Peace

A warm thank-you to all fourteen Friends who came out on Sunday — particularly the five who joined us for the first time, and the visiting students who once again brought their energy and curiosity with them. Eight ton bags of green waste went out at the end of the day, lower than usual but reflective of how much of the morning went to litter and how much of the afternoon went to slower, more careful work at the main gate and behind the stone basin area. The next session is Sunday 31 May, and there is a great deal more to do at the main gate before then.