Brief bio of Sadafumi Uchiyama
Sadafumi Uchiyama is a third-generation Japanese gardener from southern Japan where his family has been involved in gardening for over a century. Prior to his appointment as the Garden Curator of the Portland Japanese Garden in October 2008, he served as a Vice President on that institution’s Board of Directors. Devoted to fostering relations between Japanese gardens inside and outside of Japan, Uchiyama served as one of seven founding members of the International Association of Japanese Gardens (IAJG). He was also elected to serve as a Charter Member of the North American Japanese Garden Association (NAJGA) Board as well as of that organization’s Editorial Board.
Uchiyama has taught landscape design courses and lectured and published widely on Japanese gardening. As the Chief Curator and Director of the International Japanese Garden Training Center at the Portland Japanese Garden, Uchiyama is actively engaged in ongoing public education and speaks regularly at horticultural societies, garden clubs, schools, and professional conferences in Japan and throughout the US.
Uchiyama is a registered landscape architect in Oregon and California. His traditional apprenticeship in Japanese gardening combined with formal training in landscape architecture at the University of Illinois has allowed him to design and build a wide and unique range of private and public landscape projects. Representative examples of his work include the renovation of the Osaka Garden, the site of the 1893 Great Columbian Exposition at Jackson Park in Chicago (2000- to date), and the Shofu-en of the Denver Botanic Gardens (2001-20012). More recent projects include the Shoun-Kei Japanese garden at the Sarah Duke Gardens at Duke University, North Carolina (2015) and the Rolex Headquarters in Dallas, Texas, in collaboration with Kengo Kuma.