On Flower Beds: Yokohama’s Green Up Plan and management of neighborhoods environment 1

 

A typical scenery of suburbia in metropolis Tokyo: rows of detached houses with small garden in which some plantings are facing a commuter road. Hopefully all are neatly maintained with seasonal colors. Now in November maybe there will be colored leaves of dwarf maples or white Alyssum. OK. In Japan the right of land holding is strong. A landlord can do whatever s/he wants to do with the land as long as it is not illegal. (Needless to say, cooking illegal drugs or bombs is not allowed wherever.) The downside of this arrangement is, the responsibility of maintaining presentable scenery of suburbia is entirely on the shoulder of landlords. Those beautiful red colors of autumn leaves in neighbors’ garden were bought and tended by the house owner’s family.

If you garden, you know it is not an easy task. For beautiful hedges of your sweet home, you have to invest money and time. With a courtesy of Amazon Japan, we can purchase a seedling of box tree for approximately 6000 yen. For fertilizer, please make a budget of at least 1000 yen for 1L. You need garden scissors, trowel, gloves, etc. etc. You love gardening, fine. But if you’re old enough for having difficulty kneeling down to work for a flower bed, you’ll face a problem. If the space is facing a commuter road, and there are lots of people who do not like a messed-up and abandoned garden along a road for their daily lives, your problem will be bigger. You could hear complaints from your neighbors about your “inability for keeping the garden tidy.” You may be robust enough to present gorgeous roses now, but can you do it in 20 years’ time? Is your roadside garden able to be pretty for ages? Are you sure? Can you deal with the invasion of silver grass (; my post last week) in 2027?

Probably, it’s not a problem only for Yokohama. Rise and fall of anything, even if it is about sleepy suburbs and their shrubbery, is inevitable in the end. And so, the issue can be the matter of local politics. When the topic is about neat rows of tulips per se, it would be a heart-warming discussion in a neighborhood meeting. But planting cute flowers could be for preventing burglary and robbery. The way to plant and maintain tulips in a road-facing flower bed could be a dead-serious matter. Also, keeping a gentrified environment may contribute to property values and business opportunities in a town. That’s the reason sometimes local governments become proactive in helping homeowners to clean up private front gardens. Actually, the City of Yokohama has such a system.

Do you remember in my post long ago (April 8, 2016) I told you about Green Tax and Yokohama Green Up Plan? The plan was started in 2009, and 2024 is the start of the 4th Five Year Plan of Green Up. The program has three pillars. One is to support people of Yokohama actively engaging in local production for local consumption, and thus contributing to the achievement of SDGs. (I hope I can post about Yokohama’s vegetable soon.) Another is to support citizens maintaining and managing natural spaces such as forests within Yokohama. (I will report to you the up-to-date status of this pillar before long.) The third pillar is about gentrification of neighborhood whose budget for FY 2024 is 580 million yen (wow). The City funds neighborhood associations and Lovers groups for small gardens in the City to keep flowers and shrubberies orderly year around. The citizens maintaining flower beds not only for neighborhood gardens, but also for shrubberies along the city roads.

In Japan, who’s responsible for managing public roads depend on the “landlord” of a road. It would be national, prefectural, and of city / town. National or prefectural offices can be remote for ordinary citizens, especially regarding commuter roads. Hence, national routes sometimes can be the most dilapidated road in the area, especially in countryside municipalities. In contrast, city or town roads normally have citizen volunteers who engage in daily management for flower beds along the road. Yokohama’s Green Up plan has budgets to support activities of volunteers who brush up roadside flower beds. The other day, I had a chance to visit one site that has additional funding to manage such gardens along their neighborhood routes. It’s a project of several neighborhood volunteer associations who collaborated to tidy up pedestrian routes meandering the area of detached houses. Next week, I’ll report to you about my adventure in a suburb of Yokohama. You may not be aware of such ordinary scenery. But there is a story. Please stay tuned 😊

If you have any questions about Yokohama’s Green Tax and Green Up Plan, please make a contact with

Strategic Planning Division, Green Environment Bureau, City of Yokohama
横浜市みどり環境局戦略企画課

Phone: 045-671-2712
FAX: 045-550-4093

Email: mk-kikaku@city.yokohama.lg.jp