Kyu-Furukawa Teien, a secret garden in Tokyo

The Kyū-Furukawa estate in Tokyo's Kita-Ku has been built by Josiah Conder in 1917, the Japanese garden was designed by Ogawa Jihei. Josiah Conder was a British architect, who was invited to Japan in 1877 to teach architecture at the Imperial College of Engineering. He also wrote the Japanese garden classic 'Landscape gardening in Japan'.

The Kyū-Furukawa garden has two main parts – the western-style villa with a beautiful rose garden in the upper part of the grounds. The lower part of the garden has a Shinji- (心字池), a pond shaped like the Chinese character for 'heart' or 'mind'. There is also a dry waterfall, a tea house and a small stream with a 10m waterfall that feeds the pond. For 500 Yen, you can have tea and Japanese sweets in the tea house.

In autumn, when the roses are flowering (mid-October to late November), and the Japanese maples (mid-November to early December) show off their foliage, the garden is especially delightful. But also in spring (late April to mid-May), the azaleas and the rose's first flowers are in full bloom.

Contents:

Introduction

History

Buildings

The Gardens

Other Highlights

Impressions

Around Kyu-Furukawa

14 pages full of information about the Kyu-Furukawa Garden

35 pictures of the gardens

PDF 15MB

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