Is the Birmingham Botanical Gardens the BEST Japanese Garden in the Southeast United States? Watch this tour and answer for yourself! Graced with tons of space and a backdrop of enormous, mature pines and deciduous trees, the Japanese Garden at the Birmingham Botanical Gardens has several scenes which would make an amazing garden on their own. From the BBG website (#Japanese): Officially opened by the Japanese Ambassador to the United States in 1967, this site is actually an interwoven collection of gardens built in the Japanese style, replete with traditional architectural and garden elements. Here you can find the tea garden, the karesansui garden with its meditative compositions of boulders set amidst a bed of raked gravel, the hill and stream garden* with features such as the Seven Virtues Waterfall, and the small stroll garden set around Long Life Lake. Casual visitors will want to study the colorful koi, relax in the lakeside rest shelter, peruse the bonsai house** or take a class at the pavilion. Plant lovers will enjoy exploring bamboo groves†, examining our growing collection of momiji – the Japanese maples – and seeing prehistoric dawn redwoods and ginkgos.
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