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THE MARGARET GRIGG
NANJING FRIENDSHIP GARDEN
The Chinese Garden

The Margaret Grigg Nanjing Friendship Garden at the Missouri Botanical Garden is modeled on the “scholar’s gardens” of the southern provinces of China, near Nanjing, which are smaller and less ornate than the Imperial gardens of the north. Designed by Chinese-born architect Yong Pan, this garden is a showplace of extraordinary craftsmanship.

The architectural elements were designed and built by Chinese artisans in Nanjing, China. They were painstakingly reconstructed at the Missouri Botanical Garden during the summer of 1996, under the watchful eye of five experts from the Nanjing Municipal Bureau of Urban Parks and Open Space Administration. The Garden commemorates the longstanding scientific and cultural exchanges between the Missouri Botanical Garden and Chinese botanical institutions, and honors the fifteenth anniversary of the sister city relationship between St. Louis, Missouri and Nanjing, China.

It is often said that a Chinese garden is built, not planted. Architectural elements such as walls, pavilions, bridges, and pavings are of central importance, while plantings are used sparingly. Designed in the traditional colors of black, white and gray, the intricate artistry and exquisite detail of the Nanjing Friendship Garden pavilion, the focal point of the garden, creates a subtle elegance in the landscape. Tiles fired in China in two or three basic shapes were later cut on site to create the roof of the pavilion, as well as decorative window frames and lattices. Some tiles were arranged in patterns and filled with colored pebbles shipped from China to create exquisite mosaic designs in the paved bluestone paths. 

Many Chinese pavilions are noted for their elaborate and fanciful carvings of animals, dragons, and sea monsters, but a “scholar’s garden” pavilion serves not only as a retreat where one can study in solitude, but as a place for delightful social gatherings, often featuring poetry contests. The great mature trees growing on the surrounding grounds of the Missouri Botanical Garden provide glimpses of “borrowed landscape” that complement the Chinese garden’s design.

The Chinese term for landscape is shan shui, literally “mountains and water.”  Water is the yin, the calm, nurturing, yielding element; mountains are the complementary yang, vertical and powerful. The garden is completed with a body of water, its spiritual heart, and monumental T’ai Hu stones, from Tai Hu or nearby regions. These fantastically shaped boulders of eroded limestone serve as nature’s statuary, evoking the awe of ancient mountains, seeming at once solid and transparent, suggesting faces, animals, or spiritual forces.

In the Nanjing Friendship Garden a hand-carved white marble bridge with a moon arch traverses a narrow mountain stream that cascades over several small falls, feeding into the central pool at the heart of the garden. Five stones are strategically placed in the pool, symbolizing the five sacred mountains in China, while rocks from both China and Missouri have been selected for placement at the stream and water’s edge.

The garden’s surrounding walls have a “dragon ripple” configuration with inset ornate windows. This adds a “borrowed” landscape, allowing visitors small glimpses outside of the Chinese Garden.

The designer of the garden has carefully chosen traditional plantings, many of which have spiritual significance or value in Chinese culture. Plantings include pines, bamboos, willows, plum trees, forsythia, hibiscus, wisteria, peonies, lotuses, rhododendrons and azaleas, with gardenias, citrus and pen-jing in containers. Many of these plants originated in China, which has the world’s largest temperate flora. A number of them were grown from seed collected in China. One of the most interesting plants is the Pinus tabuliformis, introduced by Dr. Peter Raven, president of the Missouri Botanical Garden, who acquired seeds of this tree in 1984 from northern China, which were then grown at the Garden.

A garden without an inscription would be as unthinkable as a Chinese painting without its rows of calligraphy in one corner. Poetry and philosophy of Chinese gardens, history, culture, and folklore are inscribed on rocks and black marble walls throughout the garden. On the wall beside the handsome exit, “Pendulous Lotus Gate,” is a stone tablet with calligraphy of an ancient Chinese poem by Wang Wei (699-759 A.D.) inscribed around 1900 by Pu Jie, brother of the last Chinese emperor, Pu Yi:

“Sitting alone in a secluded bamboo grove,
I was singing while playing the qin,
Before realizing, in the deep grove,
The moon had already joined me
With her beautiful light.”

EDITOR’S NOTE:  Information on Chinese gardens was researched from The Chinese Garden:  History, Art & Architecture by Maggie Keswick, London:  Academy Editions, 1978, 1986. New York:  St. Martin’s Press, 1986; Juliana Yuan, lecturer in Asian Art at Univ. of Missouri - St. Louis, and Joanne Fogarty.

The Missouri Botanical Garden’s mission is “to discover and share knowledge about plants and their environment, in order to preserve and enrich life.”  Today, 150 years after opening, the Missouri Botanical Garden is a National Historic Landmark and a center for science and conservation, education and horticultural display.

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