Overview
The Japanese Garden at the International Garden Festival Liverpool was the official Japanese government garden contribution to the 1984 horticultural exposition. It was created as a strolling pond garden and became one of the most popular gardens at the festival. The garden won major awards, including the gold medal and top honours in the permanent conservation garden section.
History
The International Garden Festival Liverpool opened on 2 May 1984 and ran until 14 October 1984 on a large former landfill / derelict industrial site beside the River Mersey. It was the first major horticultural expo held in the United Kingdom and attracted more than three million visitors. The Japanese Garden was installed as the Japanese government’s official exhibit, with the work commissioned through the Urban Green Space Development Foundation and designed by the Japanese Garden Exhibition Executive Committee, supported by Akira Ohhira of Hakone Ueki Landscape Construction Co., Ltd.
After the festival closed, parts of the site became public parkland, but the wider Festival Gardens area suffered from long neglect, vandalism and uncertain redevelopment. The Japanese Garden remained one of the important surviving garden features, although lanterns, tsukubai and other stone objects were stolen, and parts of the arbor, gate and bamboo fencing were damaged. Restoration work began around 2010–2011, with Japanese landscape architect Satoru Izawa brought in to support the restoration of the original Japanese Garden. The restored Festival Gardens later reopened to the public, preserving the Japanese Garden as one of the clearest surviving traces of the 1984 festival.
Design features
The garden was a chisen-kaiyū-shiki, or pond-strolling garden, covering about 1,426 m². It included an artificial hill, a central pond, a waterfall, mountain stream, stepping stones and viewing arbor. Nearly 500 tons of locally sourced stone were used for the waterfall, stream, stepping stones and pond edge, and 1,478 trees were planted. The design was intended to create a compact miniature landscape with water movement from the artificial mountain into the central pond.
Garden elements
Bridges
Buildings
Waters and islands
Stones
Other elements
Current status
Extant restored Japanese garden within Liverpool Festival Gardens. The garden survives from the 1984 International Garden Festival and forms part of the reopened public parkland, though several original artefacts were lost or damaged before restoration.