The Lumbini Garden was the Buddha’s birthplace. In Sanskrit, Lumbini means ‘the lovely’. It was the family home of his mother, Mayadevi, and she returned here from Kapilavastu (25 km east of Lumbini) to give birth to Siddhartha Gautama, later the Buddha (‘Enlightened One’). The site was described by the Chinese pilgrim Fa Xian and [...]
Engakuji is the main temple of the Engakuji section of the Rinzai Buddhist sect. The garden was restored in 1969 according to an old drawing. Zen Buddhism regarded gardens as microcosms of the natural landscape and this is a fine example. Kamakura became important when Shogun Yorimoto Minamoto wrested power from the imperial court at [...]
Katsura Imperial Villa was built in the early Edo Period for Prince Toshhihito (1579-1629) and work began when he was 40. The prince himself was the main designer, working with Kobori Enshu, a tea master, government official and garden designer. A lake (1.25 ha) was dug, hills and islands formed, beaches made, pavillions built and [...]
The Kyoto Imperial Palace (, Ky?to Gosho) is an imperial palace of Japan, though the Emperor of Japan is not in residence. The Emperor has resided at the Tokyo Imperial Palace since 1869 (Meiji Restoration) and ordered the preservation of the Kyoto Imperial Palace in 1877. Today the grounds are open to the public, and [...]
Kenroku-en ( Six Attributes Garden), located in Kanazawa, Ishikawa, Japan, is an old private garden developed from the 1620s to 1840s by the Maeda clan, the daimyo who ruled the former Kaga Domain. Along with Kairaku-en and Koraku-en, Kenroku-en is one of the Three Great Gardens of Japan. It is open year-round during daylight hours [...]
Kohan Kashane is a traditional Yazd ancestral mansion with an attractive small courtyard garden. There is a large iwan, a rectangular pool, flowerbeds and small trees, and typical traditional stucco decoration on the walls. From the garden, a stone staircase leads underground to a rest place cooled by a qanat (an ancient underground irrigation canal). [...]
Lion Grove Garden was first built in the Zhi Zheng period of the Yuan Dynasty. It was originally part of the Puti Zhengzong Temple. Inside the garden there are many rockeries in the shape of a lion (shizi), hence the name Lion Grove, or Shizi Lin in Chinese. The celebrated painter, Ni Zan, one of [...]
Beijing’s Olympic Forest Park was made for the 2008 Olympic Games. The landscape architecture design was led by Hu Jie, director of the Landscape Planning and Design Institute at the Urban Planning and Design Institute of Tsinghua University. As with many architecture companies in the People’s Republic of China, landscape architecture firms operate as design [...]
The Beihai Park is an imperial garden northwest of the Forbidden City in Beijing. Initially built in the 10th century, it is typical of Chinese gardens. Prior to the end of the Qing Dynasty in 1911 this area was part of the Forbidden City, but since 1925 it has been open to the public. The [...]
One of Japan’s most famous Zen gardens located in the Daisen-in (Great Hermit’s Temple), a sub-temple of the main temple of Daitoku-ji in northern Kyoto. The Daisen-in was founded in 1509 by the Zen priest Kogaku Sotan (1464-1548) upon his retirement as abbot of Daitoku-ji. The entire complex is one of the most famous examples [...]
