The Bonsaigarden is a renovation of the nursery garden carried out in 2005. It is locatedin the northeast area of Guyi Garden. The main plant in this area is bamboo,together with plum trees, orchids, and chrysanthemum. These four plants aretraditional counterparts in Chinese gardening. Tree stool bonsai, rocklandscapes, and water bonsai pavilions, etc. form a miniature garden within thegarden.
If you have seenChinese ancient brush paintings, you may see similarities between the bonsailandscapes and the painting works. It is the trend in the art of bonsai that practitionerstry to mimic the artistic conception of those ancient paintings using thevisual language and grammar of bonsai.
In thebonsai garden, there is a Flower Goddess Temple,which is a new structure based on the blueprints in a book published in 1806called the “Map of Nanxiang Town”. In1789, the owner of the garden was broke. The community collected donations,bought the garden, and made this residential garden to a public garden annexed to the Town God Temple.In the subsequent decades, the main buildings, temples, restaurants and teahouses were established in this extended garden, including this Flower Goddess Temple. There are twelveflowers which have been selected by ancient literati: prune, orchids, tea,plum, apricot, chrysanthemum, narcissus, peony, Crassulaargentea, lotus, osmanthus,and hibiscus. Please take a look of the paintings on the wall, these twelvepaintings are pictures of those twelve flower gods or goddesses.
When youfeel you’d like to explore some other places in the garden, please walk out theentrance of this bonsai garden, make a left turn, and walk over the bridge tothe east.
