🌲 Who Should You Ask to Prune Your Pine? — From a Family That Has Raised Black Pine in Mizuma, Kurume, for Four Generations 🌿

"I'd like to have the pine in my garden cared for, but I don't know who to ask."

This is something we hear often 😊

"There's a black pine in my garden that has gone untended for years."
"My gardener has retired, and I'm looking for someone to take over."

These are inquiries that reach us again and again 🌲 We also hear from people wondering what to do with a black pine they have inherited from their parents.

✂️The Black Pine Is a Tree That Asks for Attentive Care

When sunlight cannot reach its needles, the black pine turns brown and dies back. That is precisely why attentive care matters 🌿

Pruned twice a year, the tree comes into beautiful form ✨

🌱In Mizuma, We Tend Them Twice a Year

Here in Mizuma, Kurume, we have long kept to pruning twice a year — in winter (November to December) and early summer (June to mid-July). In other growing regions, pruning once a year is the norm, so the very rhythm of care is different 🌲

Mizuma also has a long tradition of branch-making that gently lets the branches droop, aiming for the dignified air of an old, venerable tree. It is a delicate technique for drawing out natural beauty 🍃

🌲What We Rely On Is the Branch-Tip Technique

Every black pine has a character of its own. Some grow more beautifully than we ever expected; others do not go quite as we had hoped.

So we feel for the delicate touch as we move a branch, and for the small signs the tree gives, and we picture the form it will take in the years ahead. This is the branch-tip technique handed down from those before us 🌿

"Never force the tree" — this is the spirit we have held dear across four generations, since our founding in the early Showa era.

📩Whatever Your Concern, Please Tell Us About It

Caring for a pine left untended, of course — and also questions like how to manage a tree from here on, or how to pass a treasured tree on to the next generation 🌲

Our craftsmen know the particular ways of caring for black pine inside and out. If you are unsure who to turn to, please set your mind at ease 🍃

We also travel to the United States for regular maintenance visits ✈️

From Mizuma, Kurume — one of Japan's three great tree-growing regions. Whatever it is about pines, please feel free to reach out 😊

Contact us here📩　https://japanese-black-pine.com/ask/