How My Husband's Death Changed My Life
Shichiku Garden opened in the outskirts of Obihiro on September 9, 1989, when I was 63 years old. Many people have asked me why I started a 15-acre flower garden after reaching an age when most people have given up the idea of starting any new projects.
I started this garden because of my husband's death due to a heart attack 13 years ago. Before his death and the opening of the garden, I was a housewife of a company executive and had nothing to do with agriculture or any related fields. The relationship between my husband and I was wonderful, and he had been more than just a good husband to me. Sometimes he was my friend, and other times he was like my younger brother and still others my father.
My husband always said to me, "One of your best qualities is a cheerful disposition." I have been very optimistic about everything and actually, my motto was any problem could be solved if I tried very hard. When my husband died, however, that belief was completely destroyed. For almost five years I was sad and depressed. Even if I looked at beautiful flowers or a clear blue sky, they didn't cheer me up at all.
One day my eldest daughter said to me, "Dad always described you as a woman with a `million-dollar smile'." That remark changed my whole attitude toward life after five years of so much worry and struggle. It made me realize that I should not betray my husband's memory by being depressed. Since then I became a very simple person again with an optimistic outlook.
An Enjoyable Job
With this new outlook I began to think seriously about how I should live the rest of my life. The life expectancy of the average Japanese person is one of the longest in the world, so it isn't unreasonable to think that I might live another 25 years. I knew that money wouldn't be problem because the pension I receive will last throughout my life. Moreover, because of my involvement in various volunteer activities, I have a lot of nice friends, not only in Obihiro but throughout Japan. With these friends I could live an enjoyable and busy life, too. Still I thought that something was missing. I considered working, but I didn't posses any special skills and virtually no company would hire a person like me who was over 60 years old.
To assist me in making a decision about my future I made a list of my strong points; at the top were my healthy body and my green thumb. My interest in gardening started when I was a high school student. My art teacher had given me 20 tulip bulbs, and I planted them in the fall and waited patiently for spring to come. They grew little by little every day, and watching them come to life made me wonder how bulbs grew into such beautiful flowers. This experience was the beginning of my life long interest in flowers.
After I got married, a friend of mine, my sister and I often walked around the mountains and fields of Tokachi enjoying the flowers and scenery. That is why we knew the best places to pick wild flowers and vegetables. In this sense, all of Tokachi was my playground. Unfortunately, I began to notice after a while that in some of the areas where there had once been an abundance of flowers, there were now very few. It was so sad to me and I wanted to do something in order to keep Hokkaido full of flowers.
Starting The Flower Garden
Naturally, the idea occurred to me to create a large-scale flower garden, but in Japan only farmers are allowed to buy farmland. To start the garden I would have to first become a farmer. When I told this idea to my daughters they reacted very critically. They said, "There are old people who are giving up farming. We have never heard of an old person like you just starting to become a farmer. Even professional farmers have trouble making a living by farming." I consulted with my friends and local farmers. To my dismay they all said the same thing. They suggested that I be content with growing flowers in my own garden at home.
I became depressed again for a while. But I came to the conclusion that only I could decide what I should do with my life, and after realizing this I told my daughters how I felt. I sold my house, an apartment building and several pieces of land which I owned to buy the land and begin construction of the garden. Even with this solid financial base I still had to take out a huge loan from the bank.
It was a long and troublesome process to start the garden. I had to be guided and trained by my district's agricultural committee and become a regular member of the local agricultural cooperative; both were very time consuming steps. Although I needed only one cho (9,000 square meters) of land for the garden, I had to buy at least 2.5 cho. There is also a regulation that stated I had to live and work more than 250 days on the land. What is more, other people had to work there, too, not only me. After overcoming these obstacles I was finally on the path to becoming a farmer.
I was very happy when I was finally considered a farmer and was able to buy the land. This may sound odd for a person who has taken on such a large project, but I am not a person with well-planned visions. When I started I didn't know much about management, so I was faced with the problem of how to manage the garden as a business entity. For many days I just looked at the huge plot of land and was at a loss about where to start. Fortunately, a man who used to work for my husband and who is now the president of a successful construction company appeared without notice and offered to help. He was worried about me, so he sent a bulldozer with an operator for several years to help with the major work.
Another friend, hearing about my project, introduced me to Ms. Mineko Oku, who had studied about flowers in England and Switzerland and had just returned to Tokyo. She is a floral architect and is engaged in designing and constructing gardens. What's more, she had been an instructor for an NHK TV program about gardening. She was so impressed by the location of the garden that she said to me, "The nature here is just wonderful. You can count on me." Shichiku Garden was designed by her and is an English garden situated in the middle of splendid scenery. It has a main boarder garden flower bed, a palette flower bed, a white garden, a plum garden, a purple boarder, a herb boarder, a herb garden, a rock garden, and others that we are still creating. We have about 1,000 different kinds of flowers and plants, including 60 varieties of lilies and another 80 varieties of purimula. Also we have hascups, raspberries, and red currants, which people can enjoy in the fall. It may take about one hour if you walk around the garden in a hurry, but if you look closely and take your time it takes several hours. And now over 50,000 people visit the garden a year.
We charge only 400 yen for each guest, thus it is difficult to manage the garden simply from the money we earn from the visitors, but the work here is interesting, so my spirits remain high. When the flowers are in vivid bloom they show the joys of life and represent each of the four seasons. My typical day starts at 3:30 in the morning in summer. I take a bath, put on work clothes, think about the day's schedule, and write letters. Sometimes I even skip breakfast. On sunny days the red sun rises through the larch trees in the eastern part of the garden, and it paints Poroshiri Mountain on the opposite side of the Tokachi Plain a soft pink. The mountains then change to a deep purple. Finally, the day breaks, the sky turns blue, and the birds begin to sing. This is the time when I am happiest. If a guest were to arrive in the morning and say, "This is just like a heaven!," I truly wouldn't mind if my life were to come to an end right then and there. At eight we have a morning meeting and then guests start to arrive at the garden. Since Obihiro Airport is close to my garden, I quite often talk with guests just before their last flight leaves. I am on the go from dawn to dusk and don't eat dinner until well after dark.
A Souvenir for My Husband in Heaven
There are probably easier and more appealing names than Shichiku Garden, such as "romance garden" or "dream garden" but there is a reason why I chose this name. Since all three of my daughters are married, the Shichiku name will disappear after my death. By using my husband's name for the garden, his life here in the heart of Tokachi will not be forgotten, rather it will be recognized by generations to come. Someday I will be able to tell my husband about "Shichiku" Garden in heaven.