Photos of Kenroku-en Garden

Kanazawa, Japan

From Fukui, we headed north towards Kanazawa to see the Kenroku-en Garden. The garden is classified as one of Japan’s “three most beautiful landscape gardens” alongside Mito’s Kairaku-en and Okayama’s Koraku-en. You may recall that we woke up really early to visit Okayama’s Koraku-en.

Kenroku-en was opened to the public in 1871. It is quite a large garden and has several ponds, streams, bridges, walking paths and hills. It also has several gardens with plum, cherry, and maple trees.

The name Kenroku-en means “Garden of the Six Sublimities”, referring to spaciousness, seclusion, artificiality, antiquity, abundant water and broad views, which according to Chinese landscape theory are the six essential attributes that make up a perfect garden.

We visited the garden in the afternoon when it was somewhat busy, though not overly crowded. The beauty of the garden was quite readily apparent and it is definitely a place to get up really early in the morning to see.

Not only is the garden beautiful, but there are so many different views. The large area that the garden covers provides plenty of space for different landscapes, and I think this is why it is one of the top three gardens in Japan.

Since it was spring, we were fortunate to see the flowers in bloom. From my online perusal, it seems like cherry blossom season and the autumn are also great times to see the garden.