The Garden Forgotten:
Why Master Plans Must Reclaim Their Soul?
How gardens matter in master planning today—what we’ve lost, what global examples teach us about space, memory, and the role of gardens in city-making.
This is Part 1 of The Garden Forgotten addressing “How Gardens Matter in Master Planning Today—what we’ve lost, what global examples teach us about space, memory, and the role of gardens in city-making.” It offers a comparative exploration of how gardens have been conceived, prioritized, or overlooked across major urban projects—revealing deeper truths about how cities shape meaning and memory. Over the decades, OHK has been involved in the design and review of hundreds of master plans across the Middle East, Africa, and beyond—ranging from entire new cities and economic zones to cultural districts, campuses, and waterfront developments. In many of these projects, we’ve led the planning process directly; in others, we’ve worked alongside the world’s top-tier architecture, urban design, and landscape firms as local advisors or lead consultants. Across this vast and varied portfolio, one pattern has been strikingly consistent: gardens and meaningful green spaces are almost always an afterthought.
Despite increased global awareness of climate resilience, wellness, and sustainability, the early phases of master planning are still dominated by floor area ratios, circulation patterns, utility corridors, and parcel optimization. Gardens—when they appear—are frequently reduced to traffic medians, generic green belts, or leftover edges around buildings. The idea of a garden as a civic heart, cultural anchor, or environmental system is rarely present in the initial vision. We often find ourselves reintroducing it, advocating persistently for space, attention, and budget. We believe this is a critical failure of imagination and priority. Gardens are not just aesthetic amenities; they are infrastructure for social cohesion, urban memory, and climate comfort. They provide public rituals, biodiversity, shade, and psychological relief. In cities where built space dominates, the absence of a real garden is felt not in square meters lost, but in identity lost. For us at OHK, restoring the role of the garden in master plans isn’t nostalgic—it’s strategic. It’s about building places that endure, connect, and heal. And in every project we take on, we continue to push back against the marginalization of gardens, insisting that they belong at the center of the plan, not its edges. Part 2 titled “Re-Centering Gardens in the Urban Space: Planning Principles” addresses how gardens can return as civic infrastructure—anchoring resilience, equity, and identity at the core of urban design.
Reading Time: 20 min.
📍 Where the Garden Leads: Villa Ephrussi and the Art of Designing from the Outside In
The most profound garden examples—those that elevate a space from merely functional to emotionally and culturally resonant—are overwhelmingly from earlier eras. Whether it's the meditative spatial choreography of Kyoto’s temple gardens, the geometric symbolism of Mughal paradises, the imperial precision of Versailles, or even the eccentric, curated dreamscapes of early 20th-century estates like Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild, these gardens were conceived as central expressions of meaning and identity. What unites them is that they were not leftover space—they were the purpose of the plan. This is a photo of the Villa Ephrussi, located on the Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat peninsula in the French Riviera. It’s one of the most iconic and purposefully garden-centric estates in Europe, and it plays a unique role in our discussion about gardens being forgotten in today’s master planning.
What makes the Villa Ephrussi exceptional is that it is a rare example of a site where the garden was the master plan. The house itself, though elegant and central, was conceived as a viewing gallery for the surrounding gardens—not the other way around. Built between 1907 and 1912 by Baroness Béatrice de Rothschild, the villa is surrounded by nine themed gardens, each designed to evoke a different culture or landscape: French, Japanese, Spanish, Florentine, Provençal, and more. At approximately 17 acres (7 hectares), the site isn’t enormous by estate standards—smaller than Versailles or the Orman Garden in Egypt, and slightly larger than the Portland Japanese Garden—but its design density and intentionality per square meter are unparalleled. Each section of the garden is curated with emotional, aesthetic, and narrative intent. The French garden, which you see in the image, is built along a grand axis with reflecting pools, fountains, and manicured parterres—offering a theatrical symmetry that aligns perfectly with the villa’s loggia. In contrast to today's large-scale developments where green space is scattered without coherence, this site exemplifies how gardens can lead design, evoke identity, and offer emotional richness that endures.
By contrast, today’s cities, campuses, and mega-developments are often guided by spreadsheets before ideas. Even when landscape architecture is included, it’s too often reactive—landscaping, not garden-making. Gardens are called “softscape,” “green buffers,” or “amenity zones.” The language itself reveals the marginalization. Ironically, we are building in a time when we need gardens more than ever—for thermal regulation, mental health, biodiversity, and social cohesion. And yet the budget, the design time, and the ambition dedicated to them have shrunk. So yes—some of the best examples belong to a bygone era, not because we’ve lost the capacity to design them, but because we’ve lost the will to prioritize them. And that’s what OHK is fighting to change: to bring the garden back to the center of the 21st-century master plan, not as a nostalgic gesture, but as a strategic necessity.
Gardens must reclaim their rightful place in city-making—as cultural infrastructure, not cosmetic filler—inspiring connection, identity, resilience, and memory.
The Garden Reclaimed: Artworks as Advocacy—At OHK, we believe that when words fail, art still speaks—and sometimes, it speaks more powerfully than any master plan or policy brief. As lovers of art ourselves, we’ve decided to push the point not only through analysis and advocacy but through visual storytelling. To advocate for gardens as strategic, emotional, and cultural infrastructure—not afterthoughts—we are turning to art as a message and a medium. Below are seven artworks that formulate our observations and convictions. To artistically illustrate this narrative—of how historical gardens were central to design and meaning while today they are relegated to afterthoughts—we draw from multiple artistic styles to evoke the emotional, philosophical, and spatial contrasts. Each example below offers a distinct lens through which to view what has been lost—and what can be reclaimed—if we once again put the garden at the center.
📍 From Earth to Eternity: The Garden of Fidelity and the Garden of Paradise —The conceptual arc of the diptych: the left panel ascends into spiritual and cosmological abstraction (Paradise), while the right is rooted in real political action (Fidelity). Together, they bridge earthly governance and eternal ideals—the two realms Mughal gardens were always designed to unify.
This diptych juxtaposes two visions of the garden in the Mughal imagination: on the right, The Garden of Fidelity (Bagh-e-Wafa), painted by Ustad Mansur circa 1590–1605 for an illustrated folio of the Baburnama, shows Emperor Babur personally supervising the construction of one of his early gardens near Kabul. This was not a metaphorical gesture, but literal statecraft through landscape—a way of asserting control, identity, and beauty through the act of garden-making. The garden is seasonal and poetic, rich in fruit trees and flowing water, evoking the Persian ideal of a pleasure garden aligned with nature’s rhythms. On the left, The Garden of Paradise (Bagh-e-Firdaus) is a 21st-century miniature in Mughal revival style, depicting an imagined aerial plan of a chaharbagh rendered as a cosmological diagram. Here, sacred geometry, quadripartite layouts, and radiant water channels evoke the four rivers of Eden and the celestial order. Together, the two works contrast historical grounding with spiritual idealism, showing how Mughal gardens united empire-building with the metaphysical.
The Garden as Foundational Vision—To further understand the Mughal garden as foundational vision, we must consider Bagh-e Babur—the most architecturally ambitious and politically symbolic of Babur’s Kabul gardens. Built shortly after his conquest of Kabul in 1504, it was one of his first major acts as ruler, laying out a terraced chaharbagh across a 28-acre hillside site. Unlike Bagh-e-Wafa, Bagh-e Babur was not merely a seasonal retreat but a monumental landscape intervention. Its fifteen terraces, marble watercourses, and axial symmetry reflected Timurid and Persian planning principles—positioning the garden as both aesthetic wonder and imperial declaration. It later became Babur’s final resting place, after his remains were moved there in 1544, fulfilling his wish to be buried amidst Kabul’s mountains and gardens. Successive Mughal emperors—Jahangir and Shah Jahan—enhanced the site, adding prayer platforms, enclosure walls, and a mosque, ensuring its legacy as both a personal and dynastic monument. Restored in the 21st century, Bagh-e Babur endures not only as an artifact of Mughal landscape design but as evidence that gardens were once conceived as the first gesture of governance—the physical manifestation of paradise, order, and sovereignty.
📍 The Garden as Generator of Form: Versailles as Landscape Sovereignty—The conceptual arc of the diptych: the left panel renders landscape as the master logic of empire, while the right panel explores how that same landscape operated as a stage for ceremony and social theatre. Together, they capture the total worldview behind the French formal garden—where nature was not only ordered, but performative, serving both symbolic and lived functions.
On the left, Vue du Château de Versailles et des Jardins (c. 1720) by Jean-Baptiste Martin reveals Versailles as a landscape-first composition. From a raised perspective, the palace appears secondary to the orchestrated garden axes that stretch to the horizon. Every element—groves, canals, parterres, and fountains—is designed to radiate symmetry, power, and control. The garden is not a background; it is the generator of form and political spectacle. This is landscape as statecraft. This extraordinary bird’s-eye composition makes one truth unavoidable: the palace was designed to serve the garden, not the other way around. Martin lays bare the spatial logic of absolutist France. Radial axes, mirrored canals, ornamental bosquets, and sculpted parterres unfold like an imperial map, with the built architecture acting merely as anchor points within a larger field of spatial choreography. The garden is not accessory—it is ideological infrastructure, shaping movement, power, and perception across terrain. In this image, landscape becomes governance, and geometry becomes propaganda. On the right, in Martin’s second Versailles scene, the lens narrows to a terrestrial vantage. Visitors stroll among fountains, patterned alleys, and sculpted paths in a world that is both public and orchestrated. The garden becomes a kind of open-air theatre where dress, gesture, and movement are all choreographed by spatial design. The ideological rigor of the grand axis now yields to the ritual pleasures of promenading and spectacle. The garden no longer only reflects the king’s power—it produces social life.
Spanning approximately 800 hectares (1,976 acres), the Gardens of Versailles remain one of the most ambitious and expansive landscape projects in history, conceived not merely as decorative grounds but as an extension of monarchical power and spatial control. Designed by André Le Nôtre beginning in 1661, the gardens include a meticulously formal 90-hectare parterre, over 50 fountains, and more than 600 water jets, all operated by a vast hydraulic system that once relied on 35 kilometers of pipes and the colossal Machine de Marly to pump water from the Seine. At the center lies the Grand Canal, stretching 1.67 kilometers in length and up to 62 meters wide—an axial spine that anchors the landscape’s long perspectives. The gardens are laced with over 43 kilometers of walking paths and bordered by nearly 200,000 trees, with an annual replanting of 210,000 flowers to maintain seasonal vibrancy. Over 30 kilometers of hedges are trimmed to preserve the sharp geometry of the layout, and the Orangerie alone houses more than 1,200 citrus trees, including oranges, lemons, and pomegranates. At the peak of its construction, Versailles mobilized a workforce of over 36,000 laborers, underscoring its scale not just as a garden, but as a national project. Even by today’s standards—when many urban parks span a few dozen hectares—Versailles dwarfs most planned landscapes, both in area and in ideological ambition. It stands as a monumental example of when landscape architecture was not subordinate to architecture, but its equal—or even its master—shaping the very logic of space, power, and perception.
Versailles stands in striking contrast to contemporary urban form, where towers are often dropped arbitrarily into plots, and parks—if included—are inserted post-facto as buffer zones. At Versailles, the garden was the generator of form: everything radiates from it, and the architectural volumes are subservient to its logic. The scale is vast, but every inch is intentional. The fountain alignments, sightlines, and reflecting basins create both literal and symbolic clarity, demonstrating how the sovereign gaze could command not just land, but order itself. Paired with works like Babur’s Garden of Fidelity or the chaharbagh vision of paradise, Versailles completes a triad of garden ideologies—where the garden is governance, cosmology, and spectacle. Each in their own way reclaims the landscape as a planning act of the highest stakes. In a time when many green spaces are reduced to amenities or decorative softscape, Versailles reminds us what is possible when landscape is given the authority to lead design.
Cities that once led in landscape planning must reclaim gardens as civic infrastructure. Restoration must go beyond appearance—reviving ecological function, social purpose, and cultural continuity to repair what rapid urbanization and neglect have erased.
📍 The Garden as Erasure: Egypt’s Forgotten French Landscapes—Egypt once led its region, and even the world, in landscape-led urbanism. From the mid-19th century under Khedive Isma'il, Cairo and Alexandria were envisioned not just as imperial capitals, but as Mediterranean metropolises. At the heart of this vision were gardens designed by French architects and horticulturalists, many trained in the great traditions of Versailles, Bois de Boulogne, and Jardin des Plantes. These gardens were not afterthoughts. They were civic statements—symbols of openness, worldliness, and ecological planning. And yet today, most stand diminished, neglected, or entirely erased. On the left: This is the aerial photograph of Cairo's Azbakeya Garden, captured by Swiss balloonist and photographer Eduard Spelterini on January 30, 1904, stands as a remarkable testament to early aerial photography and urban documentation of Cairo. On the right: This is a historic site plan of the Ezbekieh (Azbakeya) Garden in Cairo, titled “L’Ezbekieh: Parc paysager public au Caire.” Rendered in elegant French cartography, the plan offers a detailed view of one of the earliest formal public gardens in Egypt. The garden is arranged in an oval layout, enclosed by a structured perimeter with gates at the cardinal points. Within its bounds are numbered plots—likely corresponding to plant species or botanical groupings—a large central lake or pond, and a network of curved and radiating paths characteristic of picturesque landscape design. Several architectural structures are also indicated, along with a pronounced northern axis that suggests a formal promenade or primary entrance sequence.
Let’s run through the glory of that vision then and now. Take Orman Garden in Giza, commissioned in 1875 and designed by Jean-Pierre Barillet-Deschamps, the same landscape architect who shaped Napoleon III’s Paris. Originally part of the Khedival Palace grounds, it was later opened as a botanical garden, housing one of the richest plant collections in the region. Today, despite being technically preserved, it is fragmented and underutilized—a far cry from its role as a civic botanical heart. Then there is Azbakiyya Garden, once Cairo’s equivalent of a European promenade. Redesigned in the mid-19th century by French landscape architects, it featured fountains, wrought iron railings, and ornamental planting. But for years it existed in name only—largely paved over, reduced to a traffic median near Ramses Street, or used as storage land for the Cairo metro construction. Gezira Gardens on Zamalek’s island—also referred to as Jardin des Plantes—were part of a grand plan in the 1860s to turn the island into a botanical paradise. Imported specimens, rare palms, and tropical trees once lined its paths. Today, those spaces are chopped into club grounds, parking lots, and fences—still green, but privatized and inaccessible. Situated along Rue Rosette (now Fouad Street), Jardin Rosette was established in the early 20th century. Designed by Greek architect Nichols Paraskevas, it spanned approximately 6,000 square meters and featured a restaurant, cinema, and skating rink. Today, much of the original structure has been lost, and the area has been repurposed for other uses.
In Alexandria, the Antoniadis Gardens were a jewel of early cosmopolitan design, modeled after Versailles in the late 19th century. Developed by Greek-Egyptian patron Sir John Antoniadis with French design support, the gardens wrapped around a neoclassical palace and served as a public amenity. Today, the palace still stands, but the gardens are largely abandoned, overgrown, and occasionally repurposed for events—more memory than place. Not far from there, Shalalat Gardens—designed by French engineer Monfront Bey—were layered atop Alexandria’s ancient city walls. Once a landscaped marvel with an artificial lake, groves, and civic promenades, it is now severely degraded, partially fenced, and lacking active care or public integration. Even the French Garden in Suez, planted by French contractors in the 1870s, tells the same story. Though recently rehabilitated, it had spent much of the 20th century forgotten, fenced off, and misused—a fragment of its former purpose. The French Gardens at Muhammad Ali Square (Place des Consuls), established in the 1830s under Muhammad Ali Pasha, this square featured the French Gardens, a landscaped area that became a central point in Alexandria. The square also housed the equestrian statue of Muhammad Ali, sculpted by Henri Alfred Jacquemart and installed in 1872. This garden once covered around 10,000 square meters. While the statue still stands today, the area has undergone significant changes, with much of the original garden space altered or diminished due to urban development.
These are not isolated losses. They form a pattern—a pattern that reveals a deeper shift in values, priorities, and urban vision. Egypt, once a pioneer in integrating green space into its urban fabric, now stands as a cautionary tale of what happens when planning, preservation, and civic memory are neglected. In cities like Cairo and Alexandria, the decline of historic gardens is not merely about losing trees or flower beds—it is about the erosion of public life, the abandonment of civic dignity, and the disconnection between people and place. Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, Egypt’s gardens were not decorative fringes; they were structural—these landscapes were embedded in the everyday rhythms of civic life. They served as venues for gathering, leisure, education, and cultural exchange. But over time, waves of infrastructural sprawl, neglectful modernization, and short-term urban fixes consumed these spaces. Urban growth prioritized roads over promenades, buildings over botanical systems, and real-estate over green presence. Gardens were paved over, fenced off, built over, or forgotten entirely. Planning institutions lost the language—and perhaps the imagination—to see landscape as anything more than residual or symbolic. More damaging still is the cultural amnesia that accompanied this loss. Today, many of these sites are unknown even to residents who live nearby. Their stories—of design innovation, social integration, and environmental awareness—have been effaced from collective memory. Where once a garden taught civic balance and climatic adaptation, there now sits a parking lot, a fenced military facility, or an abandoned site strewn with debris.
This isn’t just a missed opportunity—it’s a distortion of what the city could be. When gardens are pushed to the margins of planning, we lose more than green. We lose shade, public joy, ecological logic, and a sense of shared space. Their reduction to nostalgic anecdotes—spoken of in postcards or faded photographs—signals not just aesthetic decline but civic retreat. It is time to reverse that pattern. If we are to design cities that are resilient, inclusive, and culturally alive, then we must treat gardens not as leftovers—but as origins. Not as luxuries—but as infrastructure. Reclaiming the garden is not romanticism—it is urban recovery. These gardens weren’t just beautiful; they were functional, climatic, educational, and democratic. Their designs were modern before the term existed—spatial tools for equity, shade, air, and civic dignity. If Egypt led the way once, it can again. By studying what was lost—Azbakiyya, Orman, Antoniadis—we can reimagine what might be built. And not just to restore the past, but to respond to today’s crises: climate adaptation, mental health, public realm equity, and sustainable densification. The French gardens of Egypt, in their ruined grace, remind us: the city we inherit is not always the one we deserve—but it can be the one we repair.
📍 The Garden as Misdirection: When Restoration Betrays History—The above photo shows the renovation of the Azbakeya Garden, one of Cairo’s oldest and most iconic public green spaces. In reviewing the recent bird’s-eye view of the site alongside the original French master plan—laid out in the early 20th century—we can observe a number of important shifts in design, intent, and execution. While certain spatial aspects have been retained, the overall composition and character of the original garden have undergone substantial transformation. Some key features from the French plan appear to be preserved in spirit. The central axis and open green core remain relatively consistent, maintaining a sense of balance in the overall layout. A bandstand-like circular feature still exists in the renovated garden, echoing the original rotunda near the western side. The water body with a bridge, once part of a more organic design element, has also survived—albeit reimagined with modern, geometric landscaping. These features suggest an effort to retain at least some of the historical bones of the site.
However, much of the integrity of the original garden plan has been lost. The rich canopy of trees that once evenly populated the space has been dramatically thinned, with large swaths of open lawn replacing shaded, densely planted areas. Important historical structures, such as the London Pavilion, the grotto, the theatre, and the Soldiers’ Club, have either disappeared or lost their original form and function. The western cultural cluster—once a key area for social and civic life within the garden—has not been meaningfully restored. Instead, wide paved plazas dominate the current layout, prioritizing event space and circulation over intimate, reflective garden experiences. Perhaps most striking is the loss of horticultural richness. The original French garden plan would have featured a carefully considered palette of trees, flowering shrubs, and seasonal planting beds, arranged to create both visual delight and ecological comfort. In the renovated version, there is little evidence of serious horticultural restoration. The planting appears sparse and largely ornamental, with minimal attention given to botanical heritage, layered planting, or biodiversity. There is a noticeable absence of flowering sequences, sensory gardens, or historically appropriate plant species, which would have been central to the original garden's charm and environmental role.
This raises a broader concern about the challenges of restoring historic gardens in rapidly changing urban contexts. A garden is not just a park—it is a living system, a cultural archive, and a spatial language. When restoration is treated as a cosmetic upgrade rather than a careful act of conservation, the result is often a hybrid space that looks orderly but feels empty. Restoring a historic garden requires more than retiling paths and repainting gazebos—it demands horticultural memory, historical literacy, and a deep understanding of how space, vegetation, and culture intersect. The renovation of Azbakeya Garden, though well-intentioned, reveals how easy it is to miss the essence of a garden when one restores only its surface.
Gardens should be seen as spatial choreography. They should be designed to guide movement, perception, and sensory experience—unfolding through transitions, layered views, and the alignment of body, rhythm, and environment.
📍 The Garden as Sacred Choreography: Movement and Bloom in Kameido—The conceptual arc of the diptych: the left panel maps physical movement through sacred terrain (The Drum Bridge), while the right panel dissolves form into sensory stillness and poetic abstraction (The Plum Orchard). Together, they trace the choreography of devotion and the ephemerality of beauty—the dual experiences at the heart of the Japanese garden tradition.
This diptych pairs two iconic ukiyo-e prints depicting the grounds of Kameido Tenjin Shrine, a celebrated Edo-period pilgrimage site. On the left, The Drum Bridge at Kameido by Katsushika Hokusai (c. 1830s) captures the act of ascent—both literal and symbolic. The sharply arched wooden bridge bends the body into ritual motion. Each step changes one’s perspective; each pause reflects a moment of transition. The bridge is not simply connective infrastructure—it is a sacred threshold, choreographed with purpose and symmetry to awaken awareness. On the right, Plum Estate at Kameido by Utagawa Hiroshige (1857) immerses the viewer in bloom. The gnarled trunk in the foreground leans in close, almost overwhelming the frame, while a delicate rhythm of visitors meanders through the flowering orchard beyond. The composition collapses linear depth into layered sensation, inviting touch, scent, and stillness. The eye wanders like a breeze through branches—here, landscape becomes emotion. Together, the prints offer a full ritual cycle: approach, elevation, pause, and dissolve. The garden is not decoration, but a medium through which space, time, and self are re-aligned. In these works, we see a spatial literacy that modern planning too often forgets: that to truly design for people, we must design for movement and memory, for body and mind—not just for occupancy. The Japanese garden, as seen at Kameido, is not a place to visit. It is a place to become.
Where the Mughal garden asserts cosmology and empire through sacred geometry, and the French garden wields symmetry as a tool of absolutist spectacle, the Japanese garden moves differently—through rhythm, intimacy, and sensory alignment. At Bagh-e Babur, land is inscribed with sacred order; the chaharbagh divides space like scripture, grounding earthly rule in divine abstraction. At Versailles, space is flattened into obedience—sightlines stretching to infinity, fountains erupting on cue, every path a performance of control. But at Kameido, there is no singular axis or sovereign gaze. Instead, the experience unfolds through movement, not monument. You ascend the Drum Bridge not to oversee territory, but to recalibrate perception. You walk among plum blossoms not to command, but to surrender. The Mughal and French gardens make meaning by organizing the world; the Japanese garden makes meaning by letting the world reveal itself, step by step. Together, these traditions remind us that gardens were once the most serious form of design—not leftover space, but the very grammar of civilization. What varies is the sentence: imperial, geometric, poetic.
📍 The Garden as Immersive Practice: From Stillness to Dissolution—The conceptual arc of the diptych: the left panel captures a moment of suspended calm and quiet reflection, while the right dissolves structure entirely into movement and atmosphere. Together, they embody the garden not as a backdrop or symbol, but as a lived, painterly practice—one where perception deepens and boundaries blur.
This diptych draws on two paintings by Claude Monet, a French artist whose lifelong devotion to his self-designed garden at Giverny, located in the village of Giverny in Normandy, northern France, was profoundly shaped by his fascination with Japanese aesthetics. Though painted in France, these works—Water-Lily Pond, Symphony in Rose (1900s) and The Water Lily Pond, Green Harmony (c. 1900–1908)—embody principles drawn from Japanese garden traditions: asymmetry, sensory layering, seasonal attention, and the collapse of fixed perspective. In the first panel, stillness is carefully held. Lily pads and faint reflections hover on the water’s surface like thoughts barely formed. There is no architectural anchor—just the rhythm of light, shadow, and leaf. In the second, the garden dissolves entirely. Brushwork becomes breathwork. Color becomes rhythm. There is no “scene,” no horizon—only immersion. Monet is not painting the garden as object; he is practicing the garden as perception and presence.
Monet’s Giverny garden tells us far more than just the biography of a painter or the history of a place. It functions as a crossroads of garden philosophies, and reveals several profound truths about design, influence, and immersion. Here's what Giverny teaches us: first, Japanese garden philosophy can be internalized, not just copied—Monet’s Giverny garden is not a reproduction of Japanese gardens—it is a translation of their spirit. Influenced by the ukiyo-e prints he collected, Monet absorbed principles like asymmetry, seasonality, and experiential layering. He didn’t mimic the formal structures of Kameido’s shrines or Kyoto’s temple courtyards; instead, he let their logic guide his composition and perception. This tells us that Japanese garden thinking is not bound to a cultural artifact—it’s a portable system of seeing and shaping space that can be internalized by anyone, anywhere. Secondly, Japanese garden models are more scalable and personal—Giverny demonstrates that profound spatial experiences don’t require imperial scale. Where Versailles commands hectares and Babur’s gardens demand axis and terraces, Monet’s water garden thrives in a modest space—dense with plants, layered with meaning. The Japanese tradition lends itself to these more intimate scales. Its power lies in evocation, not expanse. This makes it one of the most adaptable landscape philosophies for urban, domestic, or personal gardens today—gardens that invite contemplation rather than command attention.
📍 Monet’s Garden at Giverny (present day)—this is the real garden—not the painting. And yet, it feels painted: a living atmosphere shaped by light, color, and stillness. The Japanese bridge, wisteria, and lilies remain, not as motifs, but as invitations to see. For Monet, the garden was not subject—it was vision itself.
Artistic movements are shaped by landscape design—Monet’s painting was not independent from his garden—it was born from it. The light, color, and rhythm in his Water Lily series were shaped by how he walked, paused, and looked at Giverny. This tells us that gardens are not just passive backdrops to art—they can be active generators of artistic thought. Giverny is a case study in how landscape design informs not just aesthetics, but worldview. The spatial becomes psychological. The external becomes internal. Also, The garden became a practice, not a product—For Monet, gardening was not separate from painting—it was part of his daily creative life. The garden changed constantly and was never static, never complete. It was tended, observed, repainted. This turns the notion of the garden on its head: from fixed asset to ongoing immersion. Giverny shows that the most meaningful gardens may not be designed to impress but to return to—over seasons, over years. The garden becomes a practice of seeing, not a finished object. To say the least, the East influenced the West profoundly—quietly Giverny sits within a larger 19th-century movement—Japonisme—where Japanese design radically reshaped Western visual culture. But what Monet absorbed wasn’t just surface motifs; it was a deep spatial reorientation. The Japanese garden’s rejection of symmetry, linear perspective, and central dominance challenged the very foundations of Western landscape tradition. Monet’s garden and paintings reflect this shift: toward atmosphere, edge, and multiplicity. In doing so, the East changed how the West thought about not just gardens, but space itself.
Lastly, design hierarchy can be undone—Unlike the gardens of Versailles or the Mughal chaharbagh, which assert control through symmetry, Giverny offers no dominant center, no throne, no forced perspective. It replaces hierarchy with drift, clarity with reflection. In a time when contemporary design often defaults to grids and zoning logic, Monet’s garden suggests another way—one rooted in softness, intuition, and layered perception. It reminds us that landscape can be experienced non-linearly, as something emotional, fragmentary, and intimate. The most radical design choice may be to relinquish control.
Gardens should not be omitted from visionary design. Ambitious plans must be grounded in living systems—where green space is not an afterthought, but a fundamental element alongside form, anchoring future cities in life, not abstraction.
📍 The Garden as Omission: From Monument to Void — A single image filled with every architectural ambition, yet defined by what is missing. It asks: what happens when we imagine the future without nature? The Architect’s Dream (1840), Thomas Cole—founder of the Hudson River School and fierce critic of unchecked industrialism—depicts a sleeping architect reclined on classical ruins, overlooking a vast fantasy of built civilization. The skyline unfurls as a lineage of architectural ideals: Egyptian pylons, Roman colonnades, Gothic cathedrals, and Renaissance domes. This is the total archive of form, drawn with reverence and grandeur. And yet… something is absent. There is no garden. The entire scene, for all its learned majesty, is lifeless. It is not a living world—it is a portfolio. Even the vegetation clinging to the ruins seems painted as an afterthought. What begins as a celebration of architecture ends as a warning: the triumph of form over life. Cole, who loved painting wilderness and arcadia, understood what was at stake. This painting isn’t just a dream—it’s a critique of the modern design imagination, where ambition forgets the earth.
This painting is a prophecy. It reflects what happens when ambition becomes abstraction, and when planners forget to root the future in the ground. Today, we build towering campuses, techno-cities, and billion-dollar CBDs without a single meaningful green space. Cole’s dream warns us: a city without a garden is a city without soul.
📍 The Generalife: Garden as Total Design Intent— The garden not as ornament, but as the organizing principle of daily life, power, and pleasure. Left: Photograph of the Court of the Water Channel, Generalife. Right: Santiago Rusiñol’s painting of the same scene, early 20th century.
Why the Generalife Is a Masterclass in Garden-Led Design—The Generalife (from Arabic Jannat al-‘Arīf, or “Garden of the Architect”) was not merely a summer palace for Nasrid rulers—it was a spatial philosophy. Unlike so many later European gardens, which served grand buildings, the Generalife is a rare case where architecture recedes and nature becomes theater. Every element of this garden—its arcades, loggias, shaded walks, orchards, and water stairs—was conceived not as embellishment but as the core program. The central axis of the Court of the Water Channel is not just a path or a view—it is a multi-sensory journey. Water cools the air and offers ambient sound. Citrus blossoms perfume the space. The reflecting pools modulate sunlight and rhythm. Before anyone coined the term “environmental design,” this was it. Even acts of power—governance, counsel, rest—were choreographed to happen within this calm, sensory-rich setting. The garden wasn’t an escape from politics—it was a platform for harmony between power, nature, and the divine. While Versailles expresses dominance through symmetry and scale, and Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild choreographs cultural storytelling through curated themes, the Generalife is quiet, immersive, and responsive. It leads not by grandeur, but by intimacy and climatic logic.
The Generalife stands apart from other iconic gardens like Versailles, Villa Ephrussi, and Giverny because climate control was not an incidental feature—it was the very foundation of its design. Unlike the ornamental grandeur of Versailles or the curated theatricality of Villa Ephrussi, the Generalife is a masterclass in environmental adaptation. Built in the arid climate of Andalusia, the garden responds intelligently to heat, dryness, and sun exposure. Its central water channel—the Acequia—is not merely decorative; it functions as an evaporative cooling system, subtly lowering temperatures in the surrounding courtyard. The layout channels prevailing breezes over water and through shaded corridors, creating natural ventilation and passive cooling centuries before the idea of mechanical climate control. Shade is not added later but is intrinsic to movement: arcades, tall hedges, and tree canopies guide the user through cool, protected paths, particularly during the hottest hours of the day. Even the planting choices—citrus, pomegranate, myrtle—were selected not just for beauty or symbolism, but for their resilience and ability to release aromatic oils as temperatures shift in the evening.
Also, in contrast, Versailles was designed to impress and dominate, with vast, sun-drenched lawns and fountains that symbolized power rather than served comfort. Villa Ephrussi, while situated in a Mediterranean climate, prioritized aesthetics and narrative over functional cooling. Monet’s Giverny, though immersive, was emotionally expressive, not climatically intentional. The Generalife, by comparison, was built to be lived in—not just viewed—and every spatial and sensory detail reflects that. It is the only one of these great gardens where microclimate management is not just present, but central. In a time when cities grapple with rising heat and ecological stress, the Generalife offers more than inspiration—it offers a timeless blueprint. Now compare this to the "green strips" we see outside glass office towers or residential blocks labeled "park-facing units." These are not gardens. They are design filler—un-programmed, un-sensed, un-loved. There’s no scent, no sequence, no emotional arc. Just decorative compliance with zoning codes. The Generalife reminds us that when a garden leads the design—when it’s the origin point, not the leftover space—everything else benefits: the climate, the user, the memory of the place. And that is what we are in danger of forgetting. The Generalife is an exemplary case of “The Garden as Total Design Intent.” But more importantly, it is a reminder—that gardens once carried the weight of culture, climate, and power. And they still can. If only we let them lead again.
Covering an area of approximately 1.5 hectares, the Generalife gardens are compact compared to Versailles’ vast 800-hectare estate or even Villa Ephrussi’s 7 hectares. Yet in terms of spatial density and climatic intentionality, they are unparalleled. The Court of the Water Channel itself stretches nearly 48 meters in length, flanked by narrow planted borders and arcaded galleries that produce dappled light and passive cooling. The water channel is fed by an ingenious gravity-fed hydraulic system that descends from the Alhambra's upper reservoir—a feat of medieval engineering still functioning today. More than 300 jets of water animate the space without pumps, relying instead on pressure differentials and slope calibration. The garden is layered across levels with carefully orchestrated views, offering both enclosure and exposure. Tree species were selected not only for shade but for seasonal variation: bitter orange, pomegranate, cypress, and myrtle each marking sensory changes in temperature and time. Path widths range between 1.2 and 2.5 meters, inviting slow, reflective movement rather than axial procession. Unlike the vast theatrical axes of Versailles, the Generalife’s proportions are scaled to the human body. Its metrics serve climate, rhythm, and ritual—not spectacle. In that restraint lies its genius. This is environmental infrastructure disguised as paradise.
Gardens should transform urban sprawl and decay into renewal, not just symbolize ideals. They must be designed as active frameworks for healing—turning sites of neglect into civic assets through infrastructure, memory, and inclusive, process-based regeneration rooted in real urban conditions.
📍 The Garden as Recovery: From Refuse to Renewal — The conceptual arc of this panel: unlike the idealized visions of paradise, empire, or immersion, this is a garden built on ruin—a living intervention that turns damage into design. It is not symbolic. It is structural, social, and civic. Here, the garden is not a metaphor—it is a plan for how cities heal. This image captures a panoramic and atmospheric view of Al-Azhar Park in Cairo, looking west toward the historic Citadel of Saladin and the Mosque of Muhammad Ali, which dominates the skyline with its elegant twin minarets and large central dome.
At the heart of historic Cairo, atop a 500-year-old garbage dump once used to divide the city from its own past, rises Al-Azhar Park—a contemporary landscape project of radical ambition. Commissioned by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture and inaugurated in 2005, the park spans 74 acres and sits at the crossroads of multiple histories: Islamic Cairo, the Citadel, the Fatimid city walls, and the marginalized neighborhoods of Darb al-Ahmar. Where there was once decay, the garden now unfolds—terraced lawns, palm-lined promenades, fountains, and planted axes that trace visual and physical connections across a fragmented city. But the genius of Al-Azhar Park lies beneath the surface. This was not just a greening effort—it was a reweaving of the city’s cultural, ecological, and social tissue. The excavation of the long-buried Ayyubid Wall became a historical resurrection. Infrastructure—sewage, water, and streets—was extended to underserved neighborhoods as part of the landscaping work. Thousands of local residents were trained and employed in the process. In this way, the garden served not just as a final product, but as a vehicle for process-based regeneration. This is not a nostalgic gesture—it is landscape as equity, infrastructure, and repair. The OHK team was part of the international consortium that designed and implemented Al-Azhar Park, contributing to its transformation from urban void to civic landmark.
Where many of the other examples discussed above monumentalized order, Al-Azhar Park begins with dysfunction. It does not impose a vision from above—it rises from the buried layers of the city itself. Unlike The Architect’s Dream, which omits the garden entirely, this garden is the dream made real—a dream that includes waste, labor, memory, and time. Al-Azhar Park restores the collective realm—not to contemplate, but to connect. It proves that even in an era of sprawl, crisis, and privatized development, the garden can still be the beginning—not the leftover. A tool not just for beauty, but for urban repair, civic dignity, and historical continuity. It reminds us that to design a city without gardens is to forget the past, ignore the present, and mortgage the future. Al-Azhar Park stands as a rebuttal—and a blueprint.
In terms of size, Al-Azhar Park is smaller than some of the world's major urban parks. For instance, New York City's Central Park covers about 341 hectares, and Tel Aviv's Yarkon Park spans approximately 375 hectares. Despite its relatively modest size, Al-Azhar Park plays a crucial role in Cairo, a city where green spaces are scarce. It provides a much-needed "green lung" in one of the most densely populated urban areas globally. The park attracts a significant number of visitors annually. Reports indicate that Al-Azhar Park welcomes over 1.5 million visitors each year, underscoring its importance as a recreational and cultural hub in Cairo. Beyond its recreational value, Al-Azhar Park has been a catalyst for urban renewal in the adjacent Darb al-Ahmar district. The park's development included the restoration of the historic Ayyubid Wall and initiated various social and economic projects aimed at improving the quality of life for local residents. Al-Azhar Park exemplifies how thoughtful urban design can revitalize neglected areas, provide essential green space, and foster community development, even within the constraints of a densely built historic city.
Al-Azhar Park in Cairo was not directly designed as a recreation or revival of Islamic garden typology in the strict historical sense (like the charbagh layout of Mughal gardens or the poetic symmetry of the Alhambra’s Generalife), but it was informed by Islamic design principles—filtered through a contemporary, civic, and pragmatic lens. Islamic garden design spans multiple regions and dynasties, giving rise to distinct yet interconnected schools, each shaped by geography, culture, and purpose. The Persian school pioneered the charbagh layout—an enclosed, four-part garden symbolizing paradise with strong axial geometry and flowing water. This concept traveled east and west, evolving into the monumental, imperial Mughal gardens of India, such as those at the Taj Mahal, where gardens emphasized symmetry, reflection, and political power. In contrast, the Andalusian-Maghreb tradition—seen in the Generalife and Moroccan riads—focused on intimacy, microclimate control, and sensory richness, turning inward rather than projecting dominance. The Ottoman gardens of Istanbul were more fluid and seasonal, designed to enhance palace life and urban leisure with terraces, floral variety, and scenic integration. In Egypt and the Levant, under the Fatimids and Mamluks, gardens were more urban, linear, and socially embedded—though few survive today. Finally, Timurid gardens of Central Asia served as transitional models, blending Persian structure with Central Asian landscapes and laying groundwork for later Mughal expressions. Across all schools, common features include water as both utility and metaphor, enclosed sanctuaries, axial design, and multi-sensory engagement—each reinterpreting paradise through climate, politics, and cultural vision. So, while the Azhar Park site itself had no existing Fatimid garden or preserved Islamic landscape features like those in the Alhambra or the Mughal world, the design ethos of Al-Azhar Park draws conceptually and aesthetically from Islamic landscape traditions.
Al-Azhar Park draws inspiration from Islamic garden traditions not through direct replication, but through a modern reinterpretation of their underlying spatial logic and sensory richness—Its design employs axiality and framed vistas that echo the geometry of paradise gardens without rigidly copying their formal layouts. Water features—fountains, linear channels, and reflecting pools—serve both ornamental and environmental functions, cooling the air and animating space through sound and motion. The planting palette includes citrus trees, date palms, and jacarandas, evoking the horticultural vocabulary of Islamic landscapes while adapting to Cairo’s climate. The park’s terraced topography and use of elevation allow for carefully choreographed views toward the Citadel and the historic city beyond, recalling the perspectival planning found in Islamic architecture. Yet, unlike the Generalife or Mughal gardens, Al-Azhar Park was not built atop a preserved palace garden nor meant to recreate historical typologies. Its intent was contemporary: to stitch together fragmented urban fabric, to serve marginalized neighborhoods like Darb al-Ahmar, and to embed infrastructure—sewage, water, streets—within a civic landscape. The result is not a revival, but a reinvention. Al-Azhar Park channels the ethos of Islamic gardens—order, water, shade, and sanctuary—reframed through the needs of 21st-century urbanism and inclusive design.
📍 The Garden as Urban Buffer: Where Nature Breathes Through the Grid — The conceptual arc of this photo, a wide, elevated panoramic view of Yarkon Park (Park HaYarkon) in Tel Aviv—one of the largest and most visited urban parks in the country: unlike the layered historical gardens rooted in cosmology or conquest, Yarkon Park is a garden of modern mediation—where the natural environment inserts itself as a flexible, stabilizing force amid the pressures of contemporary urban life. It is not historical, sacred, or symbolic. It is infrastructural and ecological. A green intermission in a fast-moving, tech-driven cityscape. In the foreground and middle distance, you can see the park’s expansive lawns, landscaped gardens, and artificial lake, surrounded by clusters of trees and walking paths. The open fields offer unobstructed green space that supports a wide range of recreational uses, from sports to family gatherings. To the lower left, you can distinguish the structured layout of one of the botanical or themed gardens, while to the center and right, the reflective water body with pedestrian access and small islands provides a cooling and visual anchor.
Stretching across 375 hectares along the Yarkon River in Tel Aviv, Yarkon Park is not defined by grand architecture or curated historic layers—it is defined by breathable continuity. The park moves with the city rather than against it, absorbing density while releasing public life. Created in stages from the 1950s onward, Yarkon Park was envisioned not as a single masterstroke but as an evolving system of green commons that would insulate the expanding city from its own pace. Today, it is one of the most visited parks in Israel, welcoming an estimated 16 million visitors annually—a number that places it among the most utilized urban parks in the world. What makes Yarkon Park significant is not only its scale—larger than Central Park and over five times the size of Al-Azhar Park—but its quiet adaptability. Winding through its lawns, sports fields, open-air concert venues, and tropical gardens, one senses no dominant axis, no singular gesture of control. Instead, it is a mosaic of uses, microclimates, and leisure zones. The park's six themed gardens—from the Rock Garden, which catalogs the geology of the country, to the Tropical Garden, which sustains its own mist-fed biome—serve not as ornamental additions, but as living catalogs of regional knowledge and ecological design. The park’s water channels, shaded groves, and wetland edges serve double duty: shaping recreational experience while supporting biodiversity and mitigating urban heat.
Yarkon Park is what happens when landscape is understood not as an afterthought, but as a long-range urban stabilizer. It buffers the city from infrastructural congestion and real estate pressure. It provides an interface between nature and velocity. While it lacks the historical symbolism of the Generalife or the civic repair narrative of Al-Azhar Park, Yarkon offers a different lesson: that green space is not just a salve or memory—it is a structuring medium for livability. It teaches planners not to wait until the city has broken down to insert nature, but to build with it from the beginning—as part of the everyday, the recreational, the infrastructural, and the cultural. Yarkon Park is also socially neutral territory—where a runner, a grandmother, a musician, and a child can share space without performance or pretense. This is its understated power. No ancient geometry or imperial axis. Just everyday cohabitation, powered by grass, shade, and time. In a century where cities compete over GDP, tech infrastructure, and skyline metrics, Yarkon Park reminds us that greatness can also mean giving the land back room to breathe.
Yarkon Park reminds us that urban-scale gardens and parks do not have to be realized through a singular, monumental effort or completed on a fixed timeline. Its development began in the 1950s, but the park wasn’t fully formalized or opened in its structured form until the 1970s. Rather than emerging from one historical moment or ideological vision, Yarkon Park evolved gradually—shaped by the shifting ecological, recreational, and spatial needs of a growing city. As Tel Aviv expanded into a modern metropolis, the park grew with it: incrementally, pragmatically, and with flexibility. New themed gardens, sports facilities, and cultural venues have been added in stages well into the 2000s. It is not a garden of spectacle or symbolism—it is a living system of green adaptation, proving that meaningful public landscapes can emerge not just from grand gestures, but from long-term civic patience and cumulative intent.
Gardens—even when culturally symbolic—should function as civic infrastructure. Whether drawing on heritage, tradition, or global styles, gardens must serve public life—supporting access, ecology, equity, and collective use as integral elements of the urban fabric.
📍 The Garden as Democratic Ideal: Designing the Common Ground — The conceptual arc of this garden: New York City’s Central Park is a product of democratic imagination. It is not a royal promenade or a palace’s frame. It is a civic invention—a designed landscape for the public good, built into the grid of a booming capitalist city. The park is not nostalgic. It is infrastructural optimism. A belief that even in a city of relentless ambition, space could be reserved—not for profit, but for people.
Stretching across 341 hectares (843 acres) in the heart of Manhattan, Central Park is one of the most ambitious and widely imitated examples of urban park design in history. Conceived in the mid-19th century and opened in 1858, it was not created to elevate monarchy or commemorate empire—it was created to equalize space. Designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, the park was imagined as a shared cultural commons for an industrializing city on the verge of explosive growth. It inserted not only green space into the gridded logic of Manhattan, but social ideals into the city’s spatial DNA. Unlike the rigid geometries of Versailles or the mystic alignments of the Generalife, Central Park deliberately breaks symmetry. It curves, meanders, and flows. Its lakes and meadows were carved to evoke the irregularity of nature—not to impose order, but to relieve it. Olmsted and Vaux understood the park not as a place of display, but of restoration—a visual, physical, and psychological escape from the pressures of the industrial grid. But make no mistake: the park is not untouched land. Every rock, path, and water body was designed, excavated, and engineered—a constructed pastoral meant to feel effortless.
Central Park’s genius lies in its layered neutrality. It welcomes the wealthy and the working class, locals and tourists, children and retirees—all without hierarchy or gatekeeping. There is no central monument, no architectural claim to power. Instead, there are multiple entry points, overlapping zones of use, and a constant unfolding of new perspectives. In this way, it echoes Yarkon Park’s flexibility—but predates it by a century. Where Yarkon evolves as Tel Aviv’s buffer and green release valve, Central Park was inserted as a preemptive civic right—a conscious refusal to let the city’s logic be dictated solely by real estate and infrastructure. Central Park was not born quickly. Construction took over 15 years, displacing communities, leveling land, and requiring more gunpowder than used at the Battle of Gettysburg just to blast through Manhattan’s bedrock. But it set a precedent: that a park of monumental scale could be worth the time, cost, and political will—not because it symbolized power, but because it protected joy, rest, and nature in the center of the city’s ambition. Today, Central Park serves over 42 million visitors annually—a staggering number, especially given its location in one of the world’s most densely developed areas. And yet, it remains fundamentally unchanged in principle: a garden not for display, but for democracy. A landscape where the city breathes, pauses, and remembers that common ground is not just an ideal—it can be drawn, planted, and preserved.
Central Park in New York is a masterclass in pastoral simulation where every element—lakes, hills, and woodlands—is artificially created to appear natural. Its asymmetrical, curvilinear paths invite immersion and psychological relief from the city’s rigid grid. Unlike Versailles’ rigid formality, Al-Azhar’s civic repair logic, or Yarkon’s modular zones, Central Park is a self-contained world designed to feel unplanned, even though it is meticulously orchestrated. Its sunken road system separates cars from pedestrians, making it one of the earliest examples of multi-layered circulation in urban landscape architecture. Yarkon Park in Tel Aviv breaks from the traditions of formal design and even Central Park’s romantic narrative. Instead of a singular vision or axis, it evolves as a patchwork of programmed zones—wetlands, lawns, sports areas, and themed gardens—centered loosely around the Yarkon River. Unlike Al-Azhar’s historic overlays or Versailles’ strict geometry, Yarkon’s design is adaptive, informal, and decentralized. It is technically built to absorb urban stress through its ecological infrastructure: acting as a climate regulator and social buffer across decades of Tel Aviv’s growth.
Al-Azhar Park in Cairo takes a radically different approach by embedding design within urban and historical repair, its terraced gardens and axial paths blend heritage restoration with social reintegration. Unlike Central Park’s simulated naturalism or Yarkon’s programmatic openness, Al-Azhar is precise in its visual corridors, topographic responses, and links to neglected neighborhoods. It is a civic intervention, not just a green space—where the park's infrastructure also carried new water, sewage, and training into underserved parts of the city. Versailles, by contrast, is a landscape of total control. Its hyper-symmetric, geometric layout projects hierarchy and power—everything is aligned to the King’s gaze. Unlike the responsive, democratic design of Central Park or the adaptive ecology of Yarkon, Versailles is fixed, authoritarian, and ornamental. Even Al-Azhar’s axiality serves integration and connection, whereas Versailles’ axes serve spectacle and surveillance. Technically, it is a feat of hydraulic and spatial engineering, but one whose purpose is display, not participation. Each of these landscapes follows a different logic: one simulates nature (Central Park), one absorbs the city (Yarkon), one repairs the city (Al-Azhar), and one dominates it (Versailles).
📍 The Garden as Cultural Dialogue: Portland Japanese Garden and Masterplan in Harmony with Nature—Encased in glass, the architectural model of the Portland Japanese Garden (left) offers a meticulous bird’s-eye view of one of North America’s most authentic and thoughtfully designed Japanese gardens. Resting on a contoured base of topographic lines that mirror the steep hillside terrain of Portland’s Washington Park, the model showcases how the garden’s master plan integrates architecture, landscape, and circulation into a unified and contemplative experience. The master plan, as visualized in this model, is not just a layout—it is a spatial narrative, guiding visitors through a series of emotional and aesthetic experiences designed to foster reflection, peace, and cultural appreciation. On the left, the architectural model clearly reveals how the Cultural Village is integrated into the terrain, surrounded by tall trees and curving topography, with buildings arranged organically, not axially or hierarchically. On the right, the photo of the real plaza shows how this space unfolds in reality: a minimalist, stone-paved courtyard, open to the sky and surrounded by cedar-clad, green-roofed structures that blend with the forest.
After World War II, there was a significant effort in the U.S. to rebuild cultural bridges with Japan. Part of that effort manifested in the creation of Japanese gardens in American cities—not as tourist attractions or commercial ventures, but as symbols of reconciliation, peace, and mutual respect. These gardens were often sponsored by civic leaders, sister city programs, or Japanese-American communities seeking to mend public perception after years of internment, war, and xenophobia. During the 1950s–70s, many cities established Japanese gardens as gestures of diplomacy and education. Notable examples include: The Japanese Tea Garden in San Francisco (originally built in 1894 but transformed post-war with renewed meaning), The Fort Worth Japanese Garden (1973), The Anderson Japanese Gardens in Illinois (established in the late 1970s), and The Seattle Japanese Garden (opened in 1960, like Portland, with design guidance from Japanese landscape experts). What sets the Portland Japanese Garden apart is the depth of its cultural intention, the authenticity of its design process, and its location away from a major Japanese-American urban center. Unlike botanical gardens that added a Japanese wing or theme, Portland’s garden was: built from the outset as a standalone cultural statement, not a part of a larger botanical complex, designed by Professor Takuma Tono, a landscape architect from Tokyo, which ensured fidelity to Japanese principles rather than American interpretations of them, and sited deliberately in a quiet forested area, not within an urban plaza or a revenue-driven park system.
So unlike Versailles, the Generalife, or Al-Azhar Park—which were all conceived within their own cultural or political traditions—the Portland Japanese Garden was built across traditions, as a bridge. It was established in 1963, during a period of post-war reconciliation, on land that once housed the city’s zoo in the forested hills above downtown Portland. Yet what emerged is not a replica of Japanese landscaping. It is a living gesture of respect, humility, and cross-cultural care. The garden isn’t large—just over 12 acres—but it was never meant to impress through scale. There is no monumental axis, no palace, no nationalist symbolism. Instead, it offers space: space to breathe, to contemplate, and to be attuned to seasonal change. Its design slows the visitor’s pace, detaching the senses from the city and easing the mind into a state of quiet reflection. This intention has only deepened through time. What began with a 1960s design—melding traditional Japanese garden types with the Pacific Northwest’s native ecology—has since evolved with great care. Each addition builds upon the original spirit without disrupting it. That purity of purpose endured for decades, but as public expectations of gardens evolved—and as cultural institutions globally sought to stay relevant—a need emerged to modernize, not the garden itself, but the infrastructure around it. This is what led to the 2017 addition of the Cultural Village, designed by Kengo Kuma. Unlike a retrofitted visitor center or a commercial overlay, this intervention was conceived as an architectural companion to the garden’s spirit. It provided new cultural programming, learning spaces, a café, and a proper welcome area—all without disturbing the garden’s core. If the original garden was a sanctuary, the Cultural Village became its threshold—a respectful bridge between the wider world and the inner calm the garden continues to offer.
The Portland Japanese Garden begins at its most contemporary threshold: the Cultural Village is nestled at the forested entrance on the southern slope of Washington Park, this area introduces visitors to a fusion of modern architectural sensitivity and traditional Japanese aesthetics. The Welcome Center, Jordan Schnitzer Japanese Arts Learning Center, Umami Café, and gallery spaces surround a central plaza that evokes the social openness of a traditional Japanese courtyard. Here, low-pitched roofs and charred cedar façades draw from local materials while framing borrowed views of the surrounding hills, offering an architectural prologue to the landscape beyond. From this village, visitors begin their ascent via a gently curving path—a choreographed procession into the original garden rooms designed in the 1960s by Takuma Tono. First encountered is the Strolling Pond Garden, a central feature in the classical Edo tradition, where water, bridges, and stone compositions guide movement and offer constantly shifting perspectives. The path winds past lanterns and small cascades, inviting motion and visual delight.
Next, visitors come upon the Tea Garden, introduced through a sequence of rustic stepping stones and thresholds. Designed to prepare the mind for quietude, the roji leads to a traditional tea house—an inward-facing structure partially hidden by plantings and stone arrangements that emphasize intimacy and ritual. Continuing along the path and climbing to higher elevations, one reaches the Natural Garden, a later addition that embraces the wild character of the Pacific Northwest while maintaining core Japanese design principles. Here, native ferns, maples, and conifers intermix with asymmetrical paths and cascades, creating an organic, immersive experience grounded in the philosophy of shizen—naturalness. Finally, perched toward the eastern edge lies the Sand and Stone Garden, inspired by the Zen temple gardens of Kyoto. This static, meditative space contrasts the journey so far: with no water, no movement, it captures stillness in its purest form. Carefully composed rocks and raked gravel convey symbolic depth, inviting silent contemplation. Throughout the garden, paths are designed not only to connect spaces, but to modulate rhythm—between exposure and enclosure, ascent and pause. The topography is never concealed but celebrated, with shakkei (borrowed scenery) used to frame the distant Portland skyline and nearby forest canopy. The master plan unfolds with clear narrative logic, moving from cultural encounter to sensory immersion, from movement to stillness. In this layout, every element—tree, stone, bridge, and threshold—is placed in deference to both tradition and terrain. The Portland Japanese Garden is not a single space, but a story told through space, where each garden room deepens the experience of harmony between human design and natural form.
Across these cases, the garden shifts roles. Sometimes it expresses power. Other times, it holds memory, invites joy, heals wounds, or carries the burdens of urban life. What unites them all is that the garden is not marginal. It is central to how humans have imagined beauty, order, belonging, and balance across centuries and cities. Each case reveals not a style—but a thesis about the city, the land, and our relationship to both.
At OHK, we help governments, cities, and real estate developers optimize master plans and new developments by embedding sustainability at every level—from gardens, parks, and green corridors to energy infrastructure and urban mobility. Our work transforms underutilized spaces into climate-resilient, socially vibrant, and ecologically integrated environments. Whether revitalizing historic districts or planning new growth areas, we align design, infrastructure, and investment to deliver solutions that are not only practical and place-driven, but that also restore balance between the built and natural worlds. Contact us to learn how we can help you realize the transformation of your city’s most valuable urban assets.