Duthie Park
Photo: PMJ / CC BY-SA 3.0.
Overview
The Japanese Garden in Duthie Park is a small Japanese peace garden associated with the David Welch Winter Gardens in Aberdeen. It was designed by Japanese-born landscape architect Takashi Sawano and officially opened in 1987. The garden commemorates the victims of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, so this is not just decorative Japonisme with a lantern dropped in for atmosphere, mercifully.
History
Duthie Park itself is much older: it was donated to Aberdeen by Elizabeth Crombie Duthie in 1880 and opened to the public in 1883. The park’s original layout was designed by William R. McKelvie, and the Winter Gardens were first opened in 1899, later rebuilt after storm damage and reopened in 1970.
The Japanese Garden is a late twentieth-century addition to this Victorian park and glasshouse landscape. It was created in 1987 by Takashi Sawano as a peace garden commemorating those who died as a result of the atomic bombings in Japan in 1945. It was officially opened on 23 June 1987 by Toshio Yamazaki, then Japanese ambassador to the United Kingdom. Sawano later returned to the site in 2015, when the garden was still remembered locally as a peace garden rather than merely a themed corner of the Winter Gardens.
Design features
The garden is an outdoor / courtyard-style Japanese garden within the Winter Gardens complex. Visitor and guide sources describe it as a tranquil Japanese garden area, while Duthie Park and Winter Gardens listings place it among the named sections of the David Welch Winter Gardens, alongside the Temperate House, Fern House, Tropical House and Arid House. Its function is commemorative and contemplative, so it is best recorded as a modern Japanese peace garden rather than a classical strolling garden.
Garden elements
Enclosures
Waters and islands
Stones
Other elements
Current status
Extant Japanese garden within the David Welch Winter Gardens area of Duthie Park. It remains part of the public winter-garden complex and is accessible during normal Winter Gardens opening arrangements.