Ogród Japoński, Wrocław

Ogród Japoński is a Japanese garden in Szczytnicki Park beside Centennial Hall. Created for the 1913 Centennial Exhibition, it brings together pond paths, bridges, cascades, a tea pavilion, koi, and a diverse collection of woody plants. A major flood in 1997 led to another restoration before its 1999 reopening.

Here, Ogród Japoński is a Japanese garden within Szczytnicki Park, beside Centennial Hall. Built between 1909 and 1913 for Breslau’s Centennial Exhibition, it was the event’s only exotic garden. Baron Fritz von Hochberg initiated it; the Japanese gardener Mankichi Arai created the design, and Joseph Anlauf oversaw its construction.

At the Sukiya-mon main gate, the intended route crosses the pond on the straight Yumedono Bashi bridge, then separates into two paths. One leads past the gentle Onna-daki cascade and the forceful Otoko-daki cascade; the other passes over the arched Taiko Bashi bridge to the Azumaya tea pavilion. Notice the koi in the pond: they represent long life, good fortune, and courage.

After a Polish-Japanese restoration in the nineteen nineties, the pond’s shoreline was shaped as the Japanese written character for friendship. Then the flood of July 1997 covered the garden for three weeks and destroyed about seventy percent of its new plantings. The garden reopened in 1999. Today it holds nearly 270 kinds of woody plants, including 38 species native only to Japan.