My Story
It all started when the Merritt College Aesthetic Pruning Club came to my Buddhist temple one spring morning. For years, I had been intending to join them to help. I showed up with only work gloves and enthusiasm. Expert aesthetic pruners who were leading the group that day lent me their pruners and patiently taught me how to prune the espaliered camellias and ground juniper. I canceled my afternoon plans to stay longer because I was joyfully immersed in the art and science of it. This mixed my longstanding interest in botany and plants, my creative side, and my Japanese-American artistic eye.
The Pruning Club had been tending to my temple’s Japan-esque garden for about 15 years, and I was excited to contribute. I learned a temple member’s son not only brought the pruners to our garden and established this biannual tradition, but that same person is credited with founding what we now call “aesthetic pruning”! His name is Dennis Makishima. This is truly a story of karma and interconnectedness – a Buddhist lesson in a Buddhist garden. I am not the beginning of the story but rather woven into the story of a people and an art. Now, I am an aesthetic pruner myself and co-host the Pruning Club at my temple.
I was born and raised in Japan as a child, and I’m part Japanese-American. The aesthetics that are taught in the Merritt College aesthetic pruning program come naturally to me because I was surrounded by it at home and at a young age. Some of the same artistic concepts apply to ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arrangement. I grew up with my mother’s ikebana in the house and I do it myself sometimes. As a Jodo Shinshu Buddhist, I approach pruning with presence and dedicated attention. This means I’ll come to your garden with gratitude, appreciate the plants you want pruned, consider how they’re related to the rest of the garden, and how they’re important to you – because at scales large and small we’re all interconnected.