ASPIRE TOKYO GALLERY

Garden design　1958–

Kazuyuki Ishihara

石原和幸

Chronology

  1. 1958Born in Nagasaki Prefecture
  2. 1980Enters the Ikenobo school of ikebana at twenty-two. Later begins selling flowers on the street, widening his work to a shop and then to garden-making
  3. 2004Exhibits for the first time at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show in Britain
  4. 2006Receives his first Gold Medal at Chelsea
  5. 2008Creates a green wall on the exterior of “Kazahana” in Minami-Aoyama
  6. 2009Founds Ishihara Kazuyuki Design Laboratory (September)
  7. 2012Creates “Flower Paradise: I Wanted to Read You a Green Poem” at Haneda Airport Terminal 1 (March)
  8. 2013Creates “Westin Garden”, the garden of The Westin Tokyo
  9. 2016Receives the President’s Award, the highest prize for an exhibitor, at Chelsea
  10. 2018Creates the garden “Togenkyo” (Peach Blossom Land) as an invited designer for the Beijing Expo
  11. 2020Creates the open garden “Mihara Garden” at Mihara, in his home city of Nagasaki
  12. 2025Becomes the first Japanese recipient of Gold at the Philadelphia Flower Show (March)
  13. 2025Receives his thirteenth Gold Medal at Chelsea, together with RHS Chelsea Garden of the Year and RHS People’s Choice (May)
  14. 2026Receives the Outstanding Contribution Award at the NGO CSW70 Forum, held at United Nations Headquarters in New York (March)
  15. 2026Receives a Silver-Gilt Medal at Chelsea, making eighteen consecutive awards in the twenty-two years since his first appearance (May)
  16. 2026Receives a Platinum Award at the Singapore Garden Festival (July)

Awards

  1. 2026Silver-Gilt Medal, Show Garden, RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2026 (Tokonoma Garden – Sanumaya no Niwa)
  2. 2026Platinum Award, Singapore Garden Festival 2026 (Tokonoma Garden)
  3. 2026Outstanding Contribution Award, NGO CSW70 Forum, United Nations Headquarters, New York
  4. 2025Gold Medal, Show Garden; RHS Chelsea Garden of the Year; RHS People’s Choice Best Show Garden, RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2025 (Cha No Niwa – Japanese Tea Garden)
  5. 2025Gold and all six awards, Landscape, Philadelphia Flower Show 2025 (with Treeline Designz; Tomorrow’s Eden – Gardens for a Changing World)
  6. 2023Gold Medal, RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2023 (The Biophilic Garden Otsu – Hanare)
  7. 2019Gold Medal, RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2019 (Green Switch)
  8. 2018Gold Medal, RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2018 (Omotenashi no Niwa)
  9. 2017Gold Medal, RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2017 (Gosho no Niwa – No Wall, No War)
  10. 2016Gold Medal and President’s Award, RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2016 (Senri Sentei – Garage Garden)
  11. 2015Gold Medal, RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2015 (Edo no Niwa)
  12. 2006Gold Medal, RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2006 (his first gold)

Story

Towards a World Where Everyone Can Smile

Words always accompany Kazuyuki Ishihara’s gardens. For “MOROTO no IE”, shown at the 2024 Chelsea Flower Show, he wrote: “When you are happy, your family is happy too. When a family is happy, so is the town, and then the country. If there were more flowers, might conflict disappear too? Aiming for a world where everyone can smile.”

The following year, 2025, “Cha No Niwa – Japanese Tea Garden” grew out of memories of his home town, Nagasaki. To Nagasaki, where the atomic bomb of 1945 destroyed everything, nature in time returned. Nature can come back to life, beautiful once more — the garden that expressed this hope won a Gold Medal and, at the same time, RHS Chelsea Garden of the Year, the highest honour among the gardens on show, and RHS People’s Choice, chosen by visitors’ votes. In Britain, one of the world’s great garden nations, the beauty of the Japanese garden was recognised.

His themes always lie in everyday life. In “Garage Garden” (2016), a place merely for parking a car became a place to spend time with plants. In “Green Switch” (2019), you look out at greenery through glass as you shower. And in “Tokonoma Garden – Sanumaya no Niwa” (2026), he proposed for today, as a garden, the way of life around a tokonoma, where the family gathered and people from the neighbourhood came to call. Even in a small space, a little ingenuity can give the heart room to breathe. Ishihara’s gardens teach us that.

In Mihara, in his home city of Nagasaki, he goes on making “Mihara Garden”, an open garden that makes the most of its hillside. With two gardens, one Japanese and one Western, a restaurant and café, a gallery of fukei bonsai and even a goat shed, it is a garden that never stops evolving. The City of Nagasaki has also taken note of it as a model for making good use of sloping land.

He went to Chelsea in 2026 resolved that it would be his “last challenge”, and with a Silver-Gilt Medal made it eighteen consecutive awards in twenty-two years. The philosophy and techniques he has cultivated are being handed on to “Team Ishihara”, with his son, Jun Ishihara, at its centre. The words he holds up remain the same: “Garden-making without end, for everyone. Sustainable gardens, for towns that make the heart leap. Flowers and greenery, to make Japan the most beautiful country in the world.”