A Wandering Botanist: Travel Story--Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco

It was still winter in Colorado in March 2023 when we took off to San Francisco on a California escape. The area had had a stressful winter of heavy rains and our trip was sandwiched in between two more storms. But we had a beautiful day for walking Golden Gate Park.

Japanese Tea Garden, San Francisco

The Japanese garden, formally the Japanese Tea Garden San Francisco, was established in 1894 as part of a Japanese Village at the California Midwinter Exhibition, a World's Fair. When that ended, the park was persuaded to make it a garden and a permanent fixture. At the time, Golden Gate Park was west of San Francisco; today San Francisco surrounds it.

The Japanese Tea Garden features traditional Japanese plants and landscaping. In March, to a visitor from winter, it was glorious.

rhododendron

There were calm, classical vistas with trimmed trees in the garden, overlooked by trees outside the garden (pruned by the prevailing winds off the Pacific). "Look at all that green!" said the Coloradans.

Since the garden is nearly 130 years old--indeed, the oldest public Japanese garden in the United States--there were mature little trees with interesting shapes to admire:

mature shapely tree, Japanese Tea Garden

Here, I looked up to see the cherry blossoms set against the vivid green of new leaves on a Japanese maple.

Japanese Gardens are often places of contemplation, rich in evergreens so that they are welcoming all year round. But the Japanese also appreciate flowering trees and garden flowers, for their beauty, and with the thought that this beauty is fleeting. The flowers are present briefly: cherish them.

A stream rambles through the garden, and forms ponds. These created striking reflections on this March morning. Each of these photos could be cut into halves or quarters and parts would each be very lovely.

reflections, Japanese Tea Garden, San Francisco

The Japanese Tea Garden's history also includes the tragedy of the treatment of people of Japanese ancestry in the United States during World War II. After the 1894 Exposition, Japanese landscape architect Makoto Hagiwara arranged to maintain the garden. He poured his personal wealth and expertise into it, living on the property with his family. He was removed as Director in 1901 after the passage of an anti-Asian amendment to the city charter, but he continued to manage the garden and in 1909, built his family home there. In 1942, his children and grandchildren were still managing the garden. They were all sent to internment camps by the United States government. The garden was renamed the Oriental Tea Garden. The Hagiwara house in the park was torn down, and the Tea Garden suffered from neglect. At the end of the war, the Hagiwaras did not, and indeed, with the house gone, could not, return. They got some portion of their possessions back eventually. Members of the family still live in the area, and some work with plants, but none are currently directly involved in the Tea Garden. You can imagine a very different outcome had the U.S. not interred people of Japanese ancestry during the Second World War.

The Hagiwaras certainly created a space of great beauty.

Another big old rhododendron, covered in flowers:

Here's that first rhododendron from a distance, because I thought it so beautiful.

The details of the fence are hard to make out, but they are traditional Japanese design. You can see that throughout the garden: authentic details. Those include the paving patterns in the walks, the materials and construction of the buildings, and the little shrines, to name a few that I noticed.

I have taken a lot of photos of camellias because my father grew them after he retired to Florida but, oh, this one is nearly perfect. Camellias flower in the winter, confined to regions with mild winters; these were some of the latest-blooming varieties.

camellia

And a Zen contemplation garden. Usually the idea is that the raked gravel reminds you of the sea, the rocks and plantings within as islands. An absolutely lovely spot to mediate or daydream.