00:07My name is Martin Fitton and I live in Bristol. It all started in 2009 when I
00:14visited a garden called Compton Acres in Poole and I walked through the Japanese
00:21garden I thought I've got to create this at home so as soon as I got home I
00:25started turning all the structures into red and black in the Japanese style then
00:31in 2016 all that started to rot and the garden was looking a bit worn and a bit
00:38messy really so I made a decision to start again in 2017 and I've done all the
00:44work myself what I've done is I'll research something is Japanese and make
00:50sure it's right and then I will do my best to make a replica of it and then
00:55what I would do I implement it into my garden and sometimes I got do it in a
01:01way that I can do it with the materials I I can get old off so I got to do
01:06my own
01:07spin on some of it too because I can't get the materials that you can in Japan
01:12the three main elements of a Japanese garden is rock which is it's a structure
01:19the water which creates life and the plant it gives the color throughout the
01:24season and that's how I've based my garden so and the other thing about it's
01:30all about the balance and that's what I had to get right I've had to move plants
01:34or get rid of plants because in Japan you have a space around the plants not
01:40like the the Japanese the English gardens are really nice and pretty and
01:45beautiful but they and they what they do they fill their borders with flowers and
01:50they look amazing but in Japan they have space around the plants so that's what
01:55I've done here back in I think it was 2019 before Covid I contacted NGS and I
02:05wanted to a neighbor come down to my garden he said you should open this for
02:09charity so I got a word of NGS and they come look to the garden said yes we you
02:15can do that so in 2021 after the Covid that I lifted I opened for charity and I
02:23enjoyed it so much the following year in 2022 I opened eight days in total and it
02:30was hard going and there was still a big demand to come and see my garden and as my
02:35garden is built on a budget I'd like kind of I used to save my fuel money about
02:4250 pound a month to build my garden over all these years so I haven't got the
02:48money to put back in there so what I'm doing now is opening up for tours and
02:53giving the people the the background of the Japanese elements in my garden and then
03:00and then putting the money back into the garden because there's still a lot more
03:04I want to do I was watching this YouTube guy in Japan in Kyoto the last samurai
03:11he's come here actually to fill my garden all the way from Japan which is quite
03:14nice I watch this video and I've seen this water feature and I like to build
03:19things especially out of wood but to go into concrete was something a bit
03:23different for me and how I will put it together was going to be something totally
03:27new took a few months to think how to do it and what I've done I bought a black
03:32dustbin and I cut it up and use it as a template and then I put the letters on
03:37it and then what I've done is got another bin out of me is my workshop bin cut that
03:42apart put it into the ground put a concrete plinth around it and I siliconed the
03:51top to the base and it's worked and I get a lot of people saying how the hell did you
03:55make that work but yeah I was shocked myself it worked and yeah works well it's
04:00a good feature as well it's a replica of a outside temple in Kyoto so yeah really
04:06pleased with that one
04:35you
04:38you
04:39you
04:39you
04:40you
04:54You know if you want me to
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