By Alex Edouard,
Niwaki Creative Content

I’ve been thinking about Tokachi Millennium Forest a lot recently.

Well, to be honest I’ve been thinking about Tokachi, and Hokkaido in general, almost constantly since September 2023 when Jake Hobson and I visited this Dan Pearson designed garden and associated spaces on Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido to meet the team and learn more for the first Niwaki Field Report.

In the last few weeks, Hokkaido has been in the international meteorological news, with record snowfall across the island, while a little further back Tokachi Millennium Forest was in the gardening news with the announcement that Midori Shintani – head gardener for over 15 years and our gracious, generous guide – was leaving to seek a new challenge.

It seemed like a good time to revisit (mentally, if not physically), share a few photos and impressions that didn’t make it into the Field Report and to encourage you to see and read the ones that did.

I really didn’t think I’d ever make it to Hokkaido. In my imagination, Hokkaido seemed like an inaccessible dreamland, perhaps the result of binge-reading Haruki Murakami 20-something years ago.

The Hokkaido landscape features prominently in Murakami’s 1982 novel “A Wild Sheep Chase” (and several of his other stories), portrayed as an otherworldly place where fantastical events are commonplace. Some people have speculated it’s Murakami’s metaphor for an afterlife. Somehow, it’s one of those places that almost feels made up, as though you might travel all the way there and find the whole thing is an elaborate ruse.

Leaving aside the garden for a moment, the whole experience of travelling to and around Hokkaido was memorable. For one thing, the contrast between Tokyo and Obihiro – the city closest to Tokachi and our home for two nights – was marked. Compared to the big city, the place felt empty. Where was everybody?

We arrived at Obihiro airport in the evening, greeted by the statue of an enormous, steroidal horse and a climate completely different to the one we’d left behind. Clearly this was farming country, although I later deduced that the horse was promoting Banei Tokachi, a popular local draught horse and trap racing sport.

What gardener can resist a trip to a Japanese workwear and tool supply store?

Jake and I trudged through the drizzle of the empty Obihiro night to the local branch of PRONO to admire fur-lined boiler suits, a healthy selection of gloves, bear bells and almost everything else you could need to stay safe and warm working outside.