This post is the fourth and final of the Toro no Akari blog series, an oral history of the Seattle Japanese Garden as told from the perspective of those who know its every inch most intimately: the gardeners. The series reveals a little-known history of stewardship and mentoring—of alighting each other’s paths as a toro lantern would—that’s continued for over sixty years.

In this interview, we hear from Pete Putnicki, the current Senior Gardener, who has expanded his role during his decade-long tenure to include authoring numerous blog posts and articles for the Arboretum Bulletin. He reflects on the throughline of intentionality at the heart of the garden’s past, present, and future. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Gardens Tell a Story

The appeal of Japanese gardens, for me, has always been its narrative. You get immersed in a story, not a literal sequence of events, per se, but an extremely intentional experience that gradually unfolds.

I am really drawn to the idea of sharing a story through a garden. Every element of a Japanese garden is designed, managed, and maintained to communicate with you. You bring half of the story with you; the space provides the other half. The unfolding story is reminiscent of something you’ve experienced before, but also completely new.

Don Brooks, whom I’d worked with through workshops at Plant Amnesty, recommended I visit this garden when Masa (Mizuno) was leading pine pruning. We had just met for the first time, but Masa immediately showed me everything he and the crew were doing. We walked up to the North Hill and stood halfway up the stairs. He started pointing out the big picture.

I was used to being regarded as a garden technician. I was always looking at the details. Masa showed me how the details matter in the big picture and how to look at those big-picture elements and incorporate them back into the details. He said, “Here is how the garden and its site are integrated.”

I knew this elevated way of looking at spaces would stay with me forever, even if I never came back, which, of course, I did.

Widening and Narrowing the Lens

Pete Putnicki and Masa Mizuno during a pine pruning week. (Photo: Chie Iida)

Not long after, I joined Masa’s pine pruning crew. Working on the pine trees within his narrative framework, I returned to the details, the part I was comfortable with. But this time, I had the knowledge that those details, even within one tree, were informing the big picture of the whole tree. Here’s a little branch; you're pinching off the needles, and all of those pinches create the branch that becomes the form that becomes a whole tree. I gained the ability to zoom in, zoom out, zoom in, zoom out, which is a crucial part of maintaining the integrity of the garden as a whole.

“Masa showed me how the details matter in the big picture and how to look at those big-picture elements and incorporate them back into the details.”

At the end of 2015, I was just barely back to work after suffering a bad ankle injury, unsteadily going up ladders to be part of the annual winter pine printing, when Lisa Chen, a horticulturist with Seattle Parks and Recreation, called to offer me the job of Senior Gardener. I had waited years for the opportunity, and suddenly, I was asked to start the following week.

This garden belongs to the public and is part of a complex organization—a partnership between a government institution and a non-profit. I soon learned this was a crucial facet of Seattle Japanese Garden’s narrative and history. I had a lot to learn.

Seeing the Garden’s Narrative Through Another’s Eyes

In my first year, I attempted to see the garden from a first-time visitor’s eyes—it’s one of the ways I practiced zooming in and out. I noted the impressions you get on the first viewing of the garden and considered how to shape the experience of the first, second, and third views revealed.

I started with the question, “What can be done to create a space that makes you feel integrated into it?” This led to another question, “How do you direct path edges to make them more clearly defined?” then, “How do you prune a tree so that you're revealing certain views while concealing others?”

One challenging aspect of maintaining a public garden of aesthetic significance is that many people are moving through it, and we need them to behave a certain way. If one person steps on the moss and plants to take a picture, it’s a problem you can solve with a one-on-one conversation, but you can’t do this with a thousand visitors.

“I attempted to see the garden from a first-time visitor’s eyes—it’s one of the ways I practiced zooming in and out.”

So, it’s imperative to increase ways people can grasp how to best be in the space without becoming didactic and punitive while avoiding excess signage. It’s not a sophisticated idea, but it is as much at the heart of this garden’s narrative of beauty and intention as how the plant material is presented.

A bench near the main entrance creates a special place for visitors. (Photo: David Rosen)

We moved the benches slightly off the side of the paths. That way, people feel like they're getting tucked back inside and held within the garden—they don’t have to wander into the woods someplace to have that experience anymore. We kept shrubbery at certain heights so people felt they were being enclosed or held by it without feeling like it was pushing them back. We made a million little decisions about how to, as subtly as possible, keep people doing the things that you want them to do to make the garden sharable with thousands of visitors.

This level of intentionality, even if you aren’t conscious of it, is something people seek out and aspire to when they visit this garden. They can feel it even if they can’t name it.

The Hidden Value of Intentional Space

We tend to turn back on any slightly gloomy or sad emotion in America. But it's such an important part of the human experience that we deny ourselves in many places. This garden allows you to have that feeling. If you're feeling calm here, it's because you're also allowed to feel sad.

A gardener’s job is to create something that looks more natural than nature. Take pruning, for instance: we show off the tree's branch structure to see the familiar softness and greenness of late spring and summer. But come wintertime, you can see a contrasting melancholy in the bare branch, the structure that used to hold those leaves.

“In the fall, it’s almost a riot of color; the foliage is fiery, though the days are getting colder and darker. We feel pulled in opposite directions as we put ourselves into the scenery. And yet, we feel at peace with the juxtaposition. This tension is where the pleasure of inhabiting this garden comes from.”

The gardener is tasked with making things look older, bigger, and farther away as if the elements have always been here. This helps visitors experience a sense of occupying a small space within a large yet finite timeline. This visual encounter brings up a whole host of memories and emotions: the loss of the people that you love, the fear and anxiety of being a tiny little child in a huge, scary world.

On the flip side, we also carefully show off flowers and celebrate the times of year when the sun is really bright and kind of intense, and you're feeling the pleasure of it all, which, again, is intentionally underscored by pruning the trees in a way that create deep shadows that occur only in the summertime.

In the fall, it’s almost a riot of color; the foliage is fiery, though the days are getting colder and darker. We feel pulled in opposite directions as we put ourselves into the scenery. And yet, we feel at peace with the juxtaposition. This tension is where the pleasure of inhabiting this garden comes from.

The Unbroken Thread of Gardener Lineage

I never met Dick Yamasaki, but I learned to prune pines from him ages ago.

I worked in a private garden he built at a Bellevue residence in 1973. That must have been shortly after he returned from visiting Juki Iida in Tokyo, which happens to be the year I was born.

Long after Dick’s visits to Bellevue had passed, I had the opportunity to prune this garden’s shore pines and big black pines. I was still little more than a garden technician then, but I knew enough to read the trees and pay attention to what had been done to them. I read the branches for clues.

That hand-to-hand part of the lineage felt as direct as any mentorship I could’ve gotten. I learned a tremendous amount from those trees, and the lessons were reinforced when, years later, I met Mark Akai, who’d learned a lot about pruning from Dick.

“...your job is to polish the stone. You're not there carving your name in it, and you're not cutting pieces off of it. You're taking something already beautiful and polishing it to show what's really there.”

And then, there was Jim Thomas.

Whenever Jim and I worked together, he told me his thoughts and ideas about the garden. He once shared the idea of being handed a stone and a cloth; your job is to polish the stone. You're not there carving your name in it, and you're not cutting pieces off of it. You're taking something already beautiful and polishing it to show what's really there.

Masa taught me the value of stopping in the middle of what you’re doing to seek commentary. He always had his own good ideas, but he was also legitimately curious. When he asked, “What do you think about this?” he really listened to what I had to say. Over the years, he’s continued to show me how to get really specific in my thinking about these little details and how those details are incorporated.

These gardeners have given me much-appreciated scaffolding over the years. I think about what they’ve passed onto me as I transition from a full-time gardener to an independent management role in the coming years.

As I help the next generation of gardeners grow, I intend to steal the best of what I’ve received. I hope to continue this lineage of intentionality.

An Oral History of Seattle Japanese Garden, Story No. 4: Growing a Lineage of Intentionality