It’s not uncommon for Jake Hobson to dream of trees. “I wake up in forests in the middle of the night,” says the 53-year-old founder of the Japanese horticultural-tools company Niwaki (a word that appropriately translates as “garden tree”). Yet when Hobson first moved into the red-brick and pyramid-roofed north Dorset home he shares with his wife, Keiko, and their son, Digby, in 2011, its long-neglected garden was dominated by concrete paths, five sheds and towering suburban conifers. “It conjured that sepia-toned era of gardening that includes rockeries and gnomes,” Hobson says of the secluded plot that lies on an elevated residential street in Shaftesbury, a town enfolded by the vast Blackmore Vale. “The irony is that conifers are marvellous – and an important part of every garden. I did chop them down, but planted my own purebred, Japanese varieties.”
The Hobsons’ 1960s home. The tall thin trees are Daisugi, Cryptomeria japonica © Emli Bendixen
In lieu of a cabin in the woods, Hobson sketched out a design for a summerhouse-style shed with the help of a local carpenter, complete with a sheltered porch. This rustic, rose-clad arbour, rendered in local Douglas fir, now lies at the end of a meandering grass path that, come spring, is flecked with primroses, bluebells, ribwort and dandelions.
