Wild Garden for Healthy Living: Fujisawa Garden for Calanthe discolor and Golden-rayed Lily 藤沢えびね・やまゆり園

 

From the main entrance to Endosasaogikuboyato Park 遠藤笹窪谷公園 to Keio University Bus Stop, we walk a well-paved road running in front of the medicalservice faculty and Keiiku Hospital. Before reaching the faculty building, on our left, there is a small, paved road going up into a forest. Please take this. Within 5 or so minutes, on our left there appears a gate made of logs. It is too big for a private garden, but too small for public park. Welcome. This is the entryway for Fujisawa Garden for Calanthe discolor and Golden-rayed Lily (Fujisawa Ebine Yamayuri En 藤沢えびね・やまゆり園).

Please take this road.

The banner is over there, showing the entrance.

The gate

The place is taken care of by volunteers of Fujisawa City who organize themselves as NPO Project to Revitalize Landscape and Agriculture in Endo Countryside 里地里山景観と農業の再生プロジェクト. The Garden is open to the public between April 1 and the second Sunday of August every year. To enter this Garden, please pay admission fee of 500 yen. It is in effect your donation to the Garden maintenance. The expanse of 8500m2 of private land continuing from Fujisawa Forest for Healthy Living is maintained only by the local volunteers with fairly limited help from the city. In addition, their main endeavor for the place is rather costly. They plant and try to propagate Japanese wild orchid and lilies there.

The seedlings are waiting for their turn to be planted.

Long before, the area was a vibrant rice cultivating rural village. At that time villagers grew rice in the wetland which is now Endosasaogikuboyato Park. The forest we’ve been was to supply logs = fuels of pre-petrol age, and materials for crafting tools of daily life, e.g. bamboo baskets. The forests received nutrients from fallen leaves of deciduous trees. The vegetation also gave shades during scorching summer, and shield against direct cold winter winds. Such environments loved by Japanese native orchids and lilies. Many lilies are edible, and so when their environment was neglected, as in Endo district, these plants were the subject for looting. Beautiful orchids were also the target for robbery. Once a forest with rich biodiversity suffered continuing extinctions of many species. Volunteers said NO to this. Local landlords bought in the idea of revitalization of the forest. Together, they started planting orchids and lilies. Mind you. Seeds and seedlings for lilies and orchids are not cheap. Donation is welcome.

The noticeboard at the entrance

During the season when the garden is open, one of the volunteers stations in the ticket booth at the entrance. Please pay 500 yen and receive a pamphlet-cum-map of the garden. In the Garden, there are arrows at each point of walkway. Follow these and you will return to the entry gate after walking around the Garden. The place spreading over a mild slope of a hill. Many of the paths are narrow mountain trekking roads developed by volunteers by hand. Unfortunately, the place does not have universal access for wheelchair users, but sure enough, they have many kinds of native wild lilies and orchids along the strolling paths. It is amazing.

Near the entrance the road is flat.
This point may be capable for wheelchairs …

There are benches here and there.

I had a rare encounter with slime mold in the Garden.
This is false puffball.

Volunteers planted daylilies there.
In wild, this flower can be found in
so-so wet sunny plane of ASL 1000m.

Japanese Snowball

Especially, considering the characteristics of orchids as myco-heterotrophic plant, having orchids concentrated in one area is almost miracle. When we walked through the Forest of Healthy Living to the Park, we sometimes encountered orchids, such as Cymbidium goeringii, and Cephalanthera falcata. But they did not exist en masse. Fungi for orchids are not so ubiquitous in this area. Yeah, unless fungus live in the soil, orchids will be starved to death (; my post for August 5, 2022). Still, the volunteers in the Garden have managed to maintain the variety. One of the volunteers told me they have been engaging in continuous trials and errors since 2015 when the place was opened. If one seedling dies, they plant another with the soil attached to the root. Maybe, by repeating such endeavor for more than 10 years, the fungi in the imported soil spread to their area in the hill and provided meals for orchids. More than 10 years from the beginning, patient attempts may start to yield the result.

Calanthe discolor stands together.

From their homepage, we can check which flowers are open now in the garden. When I’ve been there in spring, there were lots of spring ephemeral flowers, especially calanthe orchids. As of June 14, the homepage says the place has lots of beautiful hydrangeas. Lilies begin developing their large buds. During the Garden opening, many different kinds of flowers take centre stage in turn waiting for visitors to come. The place is a secret garden tacked in the corner of the Forest of Healthy Living. Last week, Mr. Kai Tomita, who engaged in the management of Endosasakuboyato Park and helped the orchids and lilies of Fujisawa Garden for Calanthe discolor and Golden-rayed Lily, passed away of old age. My hands in prayer. He left wild-flower legacy to the people of Fujisawa, and beyond.

Fujisawa Garden for Calanthe discolor and Golden-rayed Lily
藤沢えびね・やまゆり園

Open April 1 – the second Sunday of August,
9:00-16:00

4580 Endo, Fujisawa City
藤沢市遠藤　4580

NPO Project to Revitalize Landscape and Agriculture in Endo Countryside
NPO法人　里地里山景観と農業の再生プロジェクト

3627-9 Endo, Fujisawa City, 252-0816
〒 252-0816 藤沢市遠藤3627番地の9

☎　0466-48-8711
endousatosato@gmail.com 

https://satochi-satoyama.jimdofree.com/

Healthy for Everybody: Endosasakuboyato Park in the Forest for Healthy Living, Fujisawa City 藤沢市遠藤笹窪谷公園

 

When we enter the Forest for Healthy Living from entrance 6, the first impressions are the sudden changes of everything. So far from the Bus Stop we walked along a wide prefectural road whose opposite side is the college campus and business offices. We strolled in the row of new residential houses and small patches of veggie fields in between. But, suddenly, when we enter the Forest, it is a closed world of densely populated trees. The entrance area is occupied mainly by planted tall cedars. They are probably more than 40 years old. Forest floor was cool and dark where Lethe butterflies suddenly flied over before us. The atmosphere is calm. It’s a different world from cars buzzing away on a wide road.

Trekking road in the forest of cedars

Calm

Some gap areas appear occasionally.

Galium niewerthii Franch. & Sav.
It’s nationally defined endangered species,
Category II (VU).
It is found in Tokyo, Chiba and Kanagawa.
Actually we can find some colony of it
in Niiharu Citizen Forest
where it is one of the best hot spots of Tama Hills.
This one in the City of Fujisawa is VERY VERY rare.

Acropteris iphiata

Proceeding the trekking road to the northeast direction, we will meet a drying wetland where it was once rice paddies. Its geographical feature is Yato valley, a common rice cultivation area in the small hills of Kanto Region. I had an impression the surrounding hills here are far milder than Yato in Yokohama, like in Niiharu. Maybe, it’s a difference between Sagamihara Terrace and Tama Hills. Now the former rice paddies are covered by common reed. There is one foot path connecting both sides for Yato. Please cross the valley here and reach the other side. Follow the trekking road starting from the crossed foot path. Soon we will meet a relatively wide unpaved road running along the field of reeds. Take the direction of southeast. Before long we will be in more landscaped expanse of drying wetland. This is Endosasakuboyato Park 遠藤笹窪谷公園.

Common Reeds are entering our sight.

The foot path

To the upstream

To the downstream

Streams are snaking between the reeds.

The other side

The area is mixture of afforested cedars and
probably naturally coming broad-leaved trees.

We reach here from the back of this photo.
The trekking road comes out to this graveyard point
(on our left in this photo, but when we come here it is on our right).
 This means the forest was
once a part of the agricultural village.

The entrance to the Park is on our right.

Endosasakuboyato Park is 2.5ha of flat land in the Forest for Healthy Living. The place was once rice paddies. Now small streams and ponds run between the former paddies with Japanese Iris and sweet flags. The pathways are well-maintained and wide, which are completely capable of wheelchairs and stretchers entering. (How to come here for wheelchair users has a trick. Please read on.) The entire park area makes us feel safe, i.e. very suitable for the Forest of Healthy Living. The water system provides home for aquatic creatures, frogs et al. The forest we’ve been provides layers of protection for the living things in the Park. Volunteers for the Forest, with the help of professional landscapers, help maintain the water stream in the Park. They also research the ecosystem of the area and report their results to the public. People of Fujisawa are proud of having here as the most biodiverse area in Fujisawa City.

Wheelchair capable road

Volunteers resurrected rice cultivation here.

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm …

Benches are here and there.
The admin office is over there.

The end of today’s itinerary is an admin office for the Park. They have a mini-museum of the Forest, toilets, a seminar room, and an observation deck. People station there can give you the latest information about the Forest of Healthy Living. The other side of the admin office has a fashionable fence and beyond there is a stylish building. It is a campus for the Faculty of Nursingand Medical Care of Keio University. When we leave the admin office and take a well-maintained paved road, we find parking space for the Park, then a large car maneuvering space for the University. Go forward further. We will meet at the front entrance for Keiiku Hospital and the traffic light at the corner of commuter bus terminal of Keio University Stop. When wheelchair users plan to visit the Forest of Healthy Living, please take this route turning at the corner of the Hospital and find a parking space on your right. Yup. This is Forest of Healthy Living gatewayed by a large hospital and education institute for health services. Very apt. 😊 Before leaving the Forest, there is one more place to visit here. Unfortunately, it would be difficult for wheelchairs to visit. Otherwise, it was a curious and beautiful spot. Let’s go there next week.

The latest findings in the Forest

There are picnic benches.

A scene from the observation deck.

The main gate for Endosasakuboyato Park

The Faculty Building along the road

The Parking for the Park, and

the other side is the Faculty Building.

The hospital is on our right.

We’ve returned to the bus stop.

Endosasakuboyato Park 遠藤笹窪谷公園

4840 Endo, Fujisawa, Kanagawa Prefecture, 252-0816
Japan

Phone: 0466-47-7760
https://endosasakuboyatokouen.jp/
Instagram: @endosasakuboyatokouen

Next to the Faculty for Medical Cares: Forest for Healthy Living, Fujisawa City 藤沢市健康の森

 

One of Yokohama’s neighbors is the city of Fujisawa. The place is famous for beach tourism, whose representative is Enoshima Island (; my post for June 30, 2017). Geologically speaking the City has 4 different kinds of features. One is Enoshima Island. Then there is beach front area where sandbanks and inlets were filled up by the sediments from the sea and several small rivers. These two areas, roughly south of National Route 1, are the most populated and urbanized sections of the city. The north of Route 1 is for the third and the fourth areas where there remains decent acreage of forests and farms. As such, there are large college campuses as well. One is College of Bioresource Sciences for Nihon University in the third geological area. The area is a mixture of hills and small valleys where farmers have engaged in their agricultural business for centuries. It’s apt that Nihon University has a large campus with experimental farms there. The fourth area is the northernmost area of the city where the Sagamihara Terrace is ending. It has the highest altitude of the city, for ASL 30-40 m. And in general, the terrain is flat. So, there is a large factory and warehouses for Isuzu and an extensive Shonan-Fujisawa Campus for Keio University. The area is a mixture of such large establishments, farmland, housings and forests. It has 33ha for the water source forest for Koide River, a tributary of Sagami River. It’s located right next to the Keio Campus. Today let’s start visiting this forest whose name is Forest for Healthy Living 健康の森. The idea of this forest is not apart from the existence of Keio University.

The designation of the Forest was originally included in the City Planning Mater Plan of Fujisawa City, formulated in 1999. (It was updated in March 2026.) There, the city would have forests of culture and health for the benefit of people of Fujisawa. Already, Keio University has a campus in the north of the city surrounded by a forest. So, “culture” part was well-established in 1999. Then there were the farmlands and forests next to the Campus, or to be exact the Faculty of Nursing and Medical Care. Before Great Kanto Earthquake, this area had a large village engaged in wet-rice cultivation using the spring water for Koide River. Unfortunately, the land good for paddy cultivation was vulnerable to Magnitude 7.9. After the disaster, many people abandoned the area and greenery remained. (Keio’s Campus is on the hill, going up from the former rice paddy area.) Ironically it has worked well for nature conservation. When Fujisawa City thought the Master Plan, it was natural for the forests remained side-by-side with the faculty of medical care to be designated “Forest for Health” … er, it might be too easy idea at that time. But, now, the forest is suitable to be called “forest for Health” not only for humans, but for the ecology of all the living creatures.

To dive in the forest, first the access. The nearest public transportation facility for the forest is the commuter bus terminal for Keio Shonan Campus, named Keio University Bus Stop. There are two services to reach there. One is from Shonandai Station for Odakyu/Sotetsu/Yokohama City Subway. Another is from JR Tsujido Station. This note site, written by Student Government Association of Keio Fujisawa Campus, has a detail to use these services. Or, if you drive, there are parking spaces of 14 cars for the Forest, almost in front of Keio’s Nursing Faculty campus. It seems to me the parking is busy always. If you play safe, I recommend public transport. You get off the bus at Keio University Stop, then you may notice there is a large hospital building in front of the terminal. It is Keiiku Hospital affiliated with Keio University, famous for rehabilitation treatments. (My mom stayed there for two months after she broke her left femur due to osteoporosis.) Please cross the road and stand in front of the Hospital. Facing the hospital turn left and walk along the wide road which is Prefectural Road #410. 100m or so from the hospital, there is a road on our right. Turn right here and go along this road running in parallel to Road 410. At the 4th corner from the previous turning, 500m or so ahead, turn right. Both sides of the road are of grassland and a garden of shrubs. Ahead of us there is a forest. This is our destination today.

Keiiku Hospital’s over there.

A scene after turning right from the hospital

Our destination is over there in this photo.

200m or so from our final turning to the right, there is a small sign saying this is one of the 4 entrances to the Forest for Healthy Living. Next week, I tell you about my adventure in this Forest. It’s a relaxing walk on more or less flat trekking roads. Please stay tuned.

The signpost.
We are at the corner named Number 6.
In this exhibit, there is another forest named Forest for Boys,
west of the Forest for Healthy Living.
I haven’t checked it,
but it says there are large metasequoias,
non-native for Japan, in the center of the field.
Perhaps, it is a well-maintained garden.

Endosasakuboyato Park 遠藤笹窪谷公園

4840 Endo, Fujisawa, Kanagawa Prefecture, 252-0816
Japan

Phone: 0466-47-7760
https://endosasakuboyatokouen.jp/ 

Instagram: @endosasakuboyatokouen