Huntington Gardens

[Anonymous]

I loved both place.

[Rob_Hugo@PortNW]

Huntington Gardens, located in San Marino, is one of the most beautiful places I have visited. They have a lovely Japanese garden with curved bridges and koi ponds. They also have a replica of a Japanese house that shows the rooms and how a Japanese family lives.

A few years ago the Huntington opened a Chinese garden as well. There is a lovely tea house there that shows lovely Chinese architecture.

There is also a very large zen garden that has patterns raked into the stones. The zen garden is lined with gingko trees that turn yellow in the fall. It is a quiet place to relax and think.

Just past the zen garden The Huntington has a lovely collection of bonsai trees. The trees are labeled with their type and their age. It is amazing to see the art of bonsai being practiced by the gardeners there.

If you sign up early enough you can take field trips to the Huntington, but you need to sign up a full school year in advance. The docents give various tours to school age children. I have taken my students on a field trip to the children's garden. We walked through the Japanese garden on that field trip and got to see the Japanese house. My students loved seeing how a traditional Japanese house looks.

[Anonymous]

The last time that I went to the Huntington Gardens was over 10 years ago. My favorite part was the Japanese Garden. This last weekend I had the chance to visit again. I had no idea how much of the gardens and surrounding buildings had been refurbished in just recent years. In the Japanese Gardens there is a Ceremonial Tea House, Japanese 5 room home, the Moon Bridge, Zen Court, and a Bonsai collection.

My favorite part of the Japanese Garden was the Bonsai trees. The shapes and sizes are so interesting in comparison to what most people maybe are used to seeing. This time around visiting I wanted to know a little bit more about the cultural history of the bonsai tree and looked up a few things online after my visit. From my understanding the history actual dates back to Imperial China and Japanese Buddhist students would bring back souvenirs from mainland China. The cutting of bonsai trees is seen not only as an art form, but also almost for contemplation of the artist or viewer. I also did not know that there are so many different styles such as: formal and informal upright, slant, cascade, root over rock, shari (parts struggling to live), multi-trunk, raft-style, and forest (which is my favorite). There are far more styles in existence than mentioned above coming in small, medium, and large sizes, all the way up to 80 inches in height.
edited by slemburg on 5/4/2015

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