Alexandru Borza Botanical Garden
Photo: Cristian Bortes / CC BY 2.0, modified.
Overview
The Japanese Garden in the Alexandru Borza Botanical Garden is a thematic garden section within the university botanical garden in Cluj-Napoca. The official garden website states that it was designed by Alexandru Borza in the traditional intermediate gyō nō niwa style, with a tea house as the central point of the composition. The wider botanical garden is a scientific, educational and public institution founded in its present location by Borza in 1920 and opened to the public in 1925.
History
The Alexandru Borza Botanical Garden was founded in its current form in 1920 under Alexandru Borza and opened officially to visitors in 1925. Because the official Japanese Garden description attributes the design directly to Borza, the safest database date for the Japanese Garden is c. 1920–1925, unless a more precise construction year appears in a stronger source.
Design features
The Japanese Garden is centred on a tea house built on a small lake and covered with wisteria. The official description identifies the style as gyō nō niwa, an intermediate traditional Japanese garden style. The wider garden complex also includes systematic, phytogeographical, ornamental and greenhouse collections, so this Japanese Garden should be treated as a dedicated thematic section within a botanical garden, not as a standalone estate garden.
Garden elements
Bridges
Buildings
Waters and islands
Stones
Shinto elements
Other elements
Current status
Extant Japanese garden within the Alexandru Borza Botanical Garden of Babeș-Bolyai University. The botanical garden was established in its present form in 1920 and officially opened to the public in 1925. The Japanese Garden survives as one of the named thematic sections of the garden and is presented by the official botanical garden site as a Japanese garden designed by Alexandru Borza in the traditional intermediate gyō nō niwa style. It remains publicly accessible during botanical garden opening hours as part of the ticketed university garden complex.