Mukōjima Hyakkaen Garden 向島百花園
An Edo-period flower garden, the only one in Tokyo: from the original 360 plum trees to 230 species today
Created by the antique dealer Sahara Kikuu in the Bunka-Bunsei period (1804–1830) as a private flower garden, opened to the public for a fee by the City of Tokyo from July 1939, and protected as a national Place of Scenic Beauty and Historic Site since 1978. On the name ‘Hyakkaen’ (‘garden of a hundred blooms’) the official page gives two versions, without choosing between them: it comes either from the saying that ‘the plum blossoms before the hundred flowers’, or from the sense of ‘a garden where the flowers of the four seasons bloom in disorder’.
Tokyo
Higashi-mukojima, Hikifune
