Tokyo-based landscape designer Yukihiro Matsuda of Brocante specializes in creating small moments to instill charm in a city garden: a potting shed with stained glass windows, a shower of white flowers, a delicate vine climbing on a stucco wall.
Matsuda grew up in Tokyo and trained, originally, to be a chef. “However, when I actually got the job, I did not get used to spending day in and day out in the kitchen,” he says. Taking time off to travel in Europe, he ended up in England, where he found himself wandering around gardens “to connect life and plants.”
Back home in Japan, Matsuda worked for another landscape designer for about six years before opening a furniture and garden shop in 2003 in Tokyo’s fashionable Jiyugaoka neighborhood.
Nowadays, he spends much of his time creating Tokyo city gardens that have a distinctive European flavor. One recent challenge, for a small front garden that faces the street in Tokyo, was to create privacy, living space, and storage. Matsuda’s solution was to design a storybook shed to sit at the edge of the property where the facade can provide privacy wall for a new dining terrace (with vintage furniture from Brocante’s inventory of vintage outdoor furniture and accessories:
Photography via Brocante except where noted.
Above: A small garden shed with a peaked roof sits at the edge of the property, simultaneously welcoming visitors (who enter the garden through a wood gate at the edge of the structure) and providing privacy for a small dining terrace sited behind the building.
Before
Above: The shed, with a peaked roof that extends above the open-air walkway that leads from the street to the house, is an integral design element in the garden. Every visitor interacts with it and its diminutive proportions create a privacy screen for the garden.
Above: In addition to the shed, Matsura’s design included a tiled terrace, fence, wood deck, and new plantings for the 3,700-square-foot garden.
After
Above: The shed hides the garden and terrace from the street.
Above: A white clematis vine climbs the fence.
Above: Vintage furnishings from Brocante are sourced in France.
Above: Existing trees were transplanted and grouped to create an additional sound barrier to block street noises from the garden.
Above: Tiled steps lead up to a landing with a nook.
Above: Matsuda at Brocante, his furnishings and garden shop in Tokyo.
For more Japanese garden design, get inspired:
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