Home » Explore Brooklyn Botanic Garden » Garden Stroll
Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden
The Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden is one of the oldest and most visited Japanese-inspired gardens outside Japan. It presents a condensed idealization of nature: trees and shrubs, carefully dwarfed and shaped by cloud-pruning, are surrounded by hills, a pond, and forest-sized trees.
The garden was the first Japanese garden to be created in an American public garden. It was constructed in 1914 and 1915—at a cost of $13,000, a gift of early BBG benefactor and trustee Alfred T. White—and it first opened to the public in June 1915. It is considered to be the masterpiece of its creator, Japanese landscape designer Takeo Shiota (1881-1943). Shiota was born in a small village about 40 miles from Tokyo, and in his youth spent years traversing Japan on foot to explore the natural landscape. In 1907 he came to America, driven by an ambition to create, in his words, "a garden more beautiful than all others in the world."
Unlike the formal, highly manicured gardens of Europe, Japanese gardens are designed to mirror nature, particularly Japan's rocky coastline and mountainous landscape, using trees, plants, and structures on a scale that creates an impression of greater space. Simplicity and "harmonious asymmetry" are important principles in Japanese gardens, as are a balance between man-made and natural, and change and constancy. Many of the structural elements and plants used in a Japanese garden have symbolic meanings; these are described in the self-guided tour.
BBG's Japanese garden is a blend of the ancient hill-and-pond style and the more recent stroll-garden style, in which various landscape features are gradually revealed along winding paths. The garden features hills, a waterfall, a pond, and an island, all artificially constructed. Carefully placed rocks also play leading roles. Among the major architectural elements of the garden are wooden bridges, stone lanterns, a viewing pavilion, the torii or gateway, and a Shinto shrine.
Evergreen trees and shrubs, which symbolize permanence, predominate in the Japanese garden; brightly colored flowering plants are used with restraint. Many of these plants are traditionally found in Japanese gardens, including Japanese irises, Japanese tree peonies, Japanese maples, and azaleas. Japanese flowering cherries, which mark the beginning of spring and the season of hanami (flower viewing), grace the shoreline of the pond; the beautiful but fleeting blooms of these trees allude to the transitory nature of life. Most of the largest trees—white pine, American beech, and bald cypress—are native to North America. Although it appears natural, the garden is carefully controlled: some of the pines are pruned and trained to look old and windswept, and some of the trees and shrubs are tightly clipped to represent hills and clouds.
The Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden underwent a major restoration in 1999 and 2000, with generous funding from the Brooklyn Delegation of the New York City Council, the New York State 1996 Clean Water/Clean Air Bond Act, Independence Community Foundation, and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden Auxiliary.
More Information
- Self-guided tour of the Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden
- Photo Gallery of the Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden
- Plant list of the Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden
- 360 Degree QuickTime VR movie of the Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden
Historic Image Collection
View historic photographs of the Japanese Garden from the Historic Image Collection.
Map of the Garden
The Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden is indicated by the orange box. Click on the map to visit other locations in the Garden, or click here to view a larger map.
