German garden designer, Jenny Feuerpeil shares her fascinating journey learning the art of exterior design in Europe, Japan, and beyond.
For the past few months, we have worked closely with Dendron Exterior Design, a cosmopolitan garden design service whose international profile and paying close attention to details draws a parallel to Conyac’s aim of delivering excellence to its worldwide users.
We were delighted to talk with Dendron’s Founder and CEO, Jenny Feuerpeil. The story of how she became a garden designer is fascinating. She worked at a Japanese garden company in Saitama, wrote several books about Japanese gardens, and continues designing gardens in Germany, Japan, and the United States.
How did you manage to bring Dendron Design from Japanese daydream to an international quality brand?
After a career as a software salesperson for a global IT company in Germany, I embarked on a course of professional development that would allow me to combine my passion for design, my love of creating spaces and my wanderlust.
I studied garden design at the English Gardening School in the Chelsea Physic Garden in London, UK.
After founding Dendron Exterior Design, I moved to Japan to soak up more knowledge about material selection, spatial awareness and attention to detail. The years between 2010 and 2013 formed me as a person and made me a better designer.
Now, in San Francisco, I am exposed to entirely new design approaches and a great choice of plant material which will add a unique aspect to my cosmopolitan garden design.
Being a multilingual person, how do you perceive Conyac?
I am a native German-speaker, fluent in English and study Japanese passionately. Although I have passed the N2, the Japanese language proficiency test, I still find it hard to write business emails in Japanese. So I use Conyac mostly to stay in touch with an affiliated Japanese garden design studio in Tokyo and a business partner in Kyoto.
Also, since I am planning to go back to Kyoto for a few months to learn more about traditional Japanese gardening, I need to write a lot of business emails in “keigo,” the most polite form of Japanese. Writing keigo is pretty hard for a foreigner, so I use Conyac to save time and learn more Japanese by reading good examples.
Since you can communicate in Japanese freely, why have you decided to try Conyac at all?
I heard of Conyac from a friend. Before Conyac, it used to take me a lot of time to write emails in Japanese. No matter how often I checked, I could never be sure whether I got the right tone in business emails. I feel that I can save a lot of time with Conyac. Also, natural sounding Japanese emails will help build better relationships with my Japanese business partners.
Did Conyac complement your knowledge and give results you have expected?
Conyac is incredibly fast – and after I found a couple of good translators which I added to my favorites, I get great results. By adding good translators to my list of favorites I can eliminate the gamble and get reliable results.
Would you recommend Conyac to your business contacts?
Sure! A lot of design professionals in Japan are shy about speaking English. That creates a language barrier that inhibits personal and intercultural exchange. As a designer, whether it’s interior design, fashion design, architecture or garden design, I feel we can learn a lot from Japanese designers.
I would recommend Conyac to artists, designers, gardeners, writers, and anyone that wants to connect to other working professionals in Japan.
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Interviewer: Una Softic
Editor: DLKR