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Japanese Pruning Techniques: Tamamono vs Karikomi
- 3 days ago
- 2 min read
Walk through the garden, and you will notice shrubs shaped into smooth, rounded forms. The rounded shrubs you see are pruned to become a tamamono or karikomi; while these two are easy to mistake for one another, each has its own distinctive style.
Tamamono
玉物 tamamono: ball-shaped thing
Tamamono is a single shrub pruned into a symmetrical, dome-like sphere, its sides sloping down toward the ground on all sides. The form stands alone, one plant read as one spherical shape.
Karikomi
刈込 karikomi: careful pruning
Karikomi is made of multiple shrubs, planted close together and shaped so they connect. Each plant keeps its own rounded form rather than merging into one oversized dome, so the overall effect is a rolling line of individual mounds rather than a single mass.
In the video below, you can see our Garden Curator and Executive Director, Ben Schrepf, walk through the basics of shaping and pruning shrubs into karikomi and tamamono here at the garden.
How to Prune a Tamamono or Karikomi
Neither style works on every plant. Both tamamono and karikomi pruning styles require fine, small leaves. Large or spread-out leaves draw attention to the cuts and leave visible gaps once trimmed, while fine-leaved shrubs heal into a smooth, continuous surface.
Dwarf Myrtle, Texas Sage, and Dwarf Yaupon Holly are the plants we've shaped into these forms in the Garden, standing as domes and rolling lines throughout the scenery. These shapes need to be pruned on a regular basis to keep their shape as new sprouts disrupt the manicured curves. In summer, tamamono and karikomi need pruning every two weeks to hold their shape.
This is only the start of what goes into Japanese pruning styles. If you would like to learn more, join us at our next pruning workshop.
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