Japanese Garden technique, Yukitsuri

If you visit the Japanese gardens during winter, you will surely notice big conical structures raised around some of the pine-trees, like in this photo taken last winter in the Koishikawa Kōrakuen Garden in Tokyo.

The pine in the photo - a Hitotsu-matsu pine, is a special tree, shaped over decades with great care, until it reaches perfection. Since the snow could bend its branches, the tree is protected with this technique called Yukitsuri ("snow hanging").