Planting and installing an automatic watering system for the mist bench

A little while ago, we join the mist bench project in jinbocho (Kanda area in Tokyo) and installed some benches which have mist spray under the eaves for the purpose to make passenger cooler in the summer season. Since the Tokyo marathon was supposed to conduct around this area, we were planning to install several numbers of mist bench in this area, but it was ended up just 2 of them because the host city has changed to the Sapporo city in Hokkaido after that.

This project has the policy to use a plant from the ”Satoyama”, which defines the border zone or area between mountain foothills and arable flat land in the countryside. Because of urbanization and population decline in the suburb, it became difficult to maintain these areas and they have been gradually neglected. Since these places were sustained by a human for a long time, various negative impacts on nature if it keeps untouched. To conserve Satoyama, this project team buy plants from these areas and make a profit for the maintenance. Also by using plants from Satoyama, we believe that we are able to make the existence of Satoyama known to the public.

This is the picture of after installation of the mist bench;

This is the picture of the miscellaneous small trees we planted on the bench.

Nothing difficult but we need to be careful to make a good composition so that they can grow bigger healthily.  Having said that, we planted too many trees in the small pot, so we expect that we eventually need to thin out some trees to make spaces for them.

The picture after planting. Plants color and brown of wood bench color are perfectly matched.

A Picture of the inside of the bench; the automatic watering system was installed at the same time.

Although this bench has only a small space for the plants, we always hope we can make more green space in the city to make a cityscape more beautiful and sustainable.