In praise of the Japanese gardener *

A tribute to the history of the gardeners — Landscaping America: Beyond the Japanese Garden — opens on Sunday at the Japanese American National Museum in Little Tokyo.

This multimedia exhibition highlights how West Coast Japanese Americans drew upon their agricultural and ethnic backgrounds to carve out a viable vocational niche in gardening, and in the process, reinterpreted Japanese garden traditions, and contributed to the diversity of the American landscape.

Author Naomi Hirahara wrote the script for the film that accompanies the show. I had to crop and shrink the photo above to fit the page, but it's more powerful at full size. Same for the gardener's truck below, from the collection of Osamu Ted Kobayashi and courtesy of the Southern California Gardeners' Federation, via Hirahara. Click on the image for the larger view.

* Noted: As featured in the LAT Home section.