A garage might sound like an unseemly environment for lush vegetation, but award-winning landscape artist Kazuyuki Ishihara has built a jaw-dropping garden with a parked car as its centerpiece. At this year's Chelsea Flower Show in London, Ishihara presented Senri-Sentei, a two-tiered structure with a plentiful plot of plant life on its roof, a room with a chair and table, and a comfortable resting spot for an antique vehicle, creating a surprising harmony between garage and greenery.
Ishihara's landscaping business, Kaza Hana, is based in Japan, but he toured around Europe to source the foliage for the Flower Show design. This wasn't his first time traveling to attend the Show–he's been competing since 2004. It took a few years, though, to familiarize the London audience with his foreign aesthetic. Japan has a particular fondness for moss because it grows so amply in its humid climate, but the United Kingdom's drier air is inhospitable to the plant form, so the Flower Show judges weren’t initially eager to accept it as an integral element in Ishihara's landscaping. By 2012, however, he earned his first gold medal—and he has gone on to do so every year since. This year's award in the Artisan Gardens category marks his fifth consecutive win, owing to his groundbreaking creativity and vision.
Image above via Royal Horticultural Society Chelsea Flower Show
Image via Kazuyuki Ishihara
Image via Kazuyuki Ishihara
Image via Kazuyuki Ishihara
Image via Royal Horticultural Society Chelsea Flower Show
Image via Royal Horticultural Society Chelsea Flower Show
Image above via Royal Horticultural Society Chelsea Flower Show
Kazuyuki Ishihara/Kaza Hana: Website | Facebook
via [Spoon & Tamago]
