The Achievements and Tasks of Two-Step Pruning of Street Trees for Landscape Beautification in Kyoto City

Abstract

A new way of street trees pruning’s been adopted since 2011 in Kyoto city. The pruning is called two-step pruning, because it is taken in autumn and winter. The pruning was adopted to keep beautiful scenery of red (yellow) leaves of street trees and reduce people’s load of fallen leaves cleaning. This paper will examine the expert’s in landscape architecture thoughts and citizen’s thoughts on the two-step pruning. Through some questionnaire, this paper can know that they have various opinions, evaluations and problems on the pruning and the scenery of street trees. For this research, 258 people who live along some main streets and 37 landscape architects answered to our questions. As for the necessity of two-step pruning, more than half people and 70% of landscape architects thinks that the two-step pruning is necessary for beauty of the scenery. Especially, the pruning doesn’t cut all leaves before their turning, the red (yellow) leaves can give us a feeling autumn. It is recognized as the most important point of the pruning. As for the cleaning of fallen leaves, people who have to clean them every day can’t view its good aspect in a favorable light.