Sunset garden
(Humble Administrator’s garden: Suzhou, China)
Today Ying, his mother and I visited one of the famous gardens in Suzhou, arguably the most beautiful one. Of all improbable names, its title is ‘The Humble Administrator’s Garden’, yet there’s nothing shy about it. The garden was positively strewn with those funny shaped rocks I keep bringing up now and again, but these ones were real; I did notice that some oddly shaped rocks in Suzhou are actually two pieces of rock cemented together. I would call that cheating, so I was impressed at the selection of specimens in the garden today. Five hundred years ago, this humble administrator possessed a garden that is a marriage of water, rocks, trees, wooden buildings and landscaping and it is amazing that it all still stands today. Although we were a little late arriving and the light was beginning to fail, the garden was teeming with tourist groups and photography enthusiasts, so any planned serenity was slightly lost.
This view is taken from the central area of the garden from which it is possible to see a distant pagoda, a piece of scenery ‘borrowed’ from another nearby garden. The planting and arrangement of the displays were planned around framing the view that you can see here. There are so many ornamental gardens in this city, enough in fact to be considered a major sight in China. On a wall display today, the city gardens is ranked number nineteen in a list of the thirty best national tourist attractions, which in a country this size is probably more impressive than it sounds.
