The Art of Sweeping Leaves

Hello Everyone,

I live in Japan. Once when I was talking to a Japanese gardener, he showed me how to sweep up leaves on gravel. Not being an experienced gardener, I have no idea if this is one of the ways people would do it back home. Perhaps it’s just plain old common sense. I thought it was interesting though.

You use an old fashioned style broom to lightly dust across the tops of the stones or gravel. Old bits of bristles that have fallen out are tied together with wire to make a smaller version of the broom. You use this to finally sweep the leaves into a type of wicker-work pan. In this way, you don’t get too many stones in the pan. However, it is quite an art not to get any in! I find it quite therapeutic. Of course, you could just use a leaf blower.

I tried to upload a video but couldn’t manage it. I added it to YouTube, if you’re interested.

Many thanks.

Chris

 

I do it with an ordinary sweeping brush @Kurisu. It takes a little while to get the technique, but I worked with horses for many years, and you get pretty adept at doing large areas of gravel with bits of straw/hay etc in them.

 

It looks a relaxing thing to do

 

Chris

I love those "witches brooms" as I call them.

 

I must admit that with these strong winds we are blessed with a natural leaf blower. However, I did get on my hands and knees in order to remove the worst of them in one small area.
I dislike the man made leaf blowers. Noisy and a waste of energy.

 

Thanks a lot everyone for your replies. Interesting stuff. I generally use Chris. The Username was just a nod at the Katakana pronunciation as you noticed @shiney

 

You can't beat a good old fashioned besom,the old ways are the best and before you start @shiney it's not my taxi
They're marvelous for gravel,lawns and borders

 

Besom! What a nice name, these were used extensively by local folks in Italy. I guess they often made their own and we eventually found they very useful for such as leaves.