Botanical Gardens in Kyoto
A visual guide from the Kyoto travel guide — see all posters in Visual Guides.
The Kyoto Prefectural Botanical Garden opened in 1924 and is the oldest public botanical garden in Japan: twenty-four hectares of lawn, pond and woodland with one of the country's largest conservatories, sitting directly on top of a subway station at Kitayama. It is where Kyoto goes to lie on the grass. The cherry lawn draws a picnic crowd in April, the rose garden peaks around May, and the Nakaragi woodland behind it hides a slow, shaded path that comes out on the Kamo River.
The main garden
Take the Karasuma subway to Kitayama and the north gate is at the exit, with Kitaoji station serving the other end. Entry is usually a few hundred yen, with a small extra charge for the conservatory, which runs from tropical rainforest through desert to an alpine room and is the reason to come on a wet or freezing day. Outside, the layout is deliberately unfussy: broad lawns, a large pond, a bamboo grove, camellias and hydrangeas taking their turn. Two hours is comfortable, though families routinely settle in for the whole afternoon.
Other green spaces
Kyoto Gyoen, the gravel-and-pine park surrounding the Imperial Palace, is free, open at all hours and has a plum grove that flowers from late February plus a well-known weeping cherry near Konoe Pond. Umekoji Park, west of Kyoto Station, combines lawns with the Suzaku no Niwa garden and sits beside the Railway Museum and Aquarium, which makes it an easy family stop. For a walk rather than a garden, the Nakaragi-no-michi path along the Kamo River north of Kitaoji Bridge becomes a cherry tunnel in April and stays quiet the rest of the year.