Ranking the Four Best Classical Gardens in China 2024

Beijing is a must for a China tour, and the Summer Palace is a must for a Beijing tour. Covering an area nearly 3 square kilometers, the Summer Palace (颐和园) is China’s largest survived landscape garden as well as the best-preserved imperial garden. People honored it as the museum of imperial gardens. It was built in 1750 during Qing Dynasty. In 1998, UNESCO described it as a masterpiece of Chinese landscape garden design and listed in the World Heritage List.

Just as its name implies, the Summer Palace is seasonal retreat for Royalty from the Forbidden City. It can be divided into three parts, court area, living quarters, and leisure area. In court area, you can see many palace building where the Empress Dowager Cixi and Guangxu Emperor dealt with the affairs. In fact, the Summer Palace was the favorite haunt of Empress Cixi, so you can find many attractions involving her story. In the living quarters, there are many majestic palaces, including Leshou Palace, Yulan Palace, Yiyun Palace... It is really a visual feast and enjoyable journey to visit the last area, which contains entertaining, sightseeing and garden part. The Long Corridor, winding along the shore of Kunming Lake, is exquisitely-decorated with scenic paintings on all the ceiling and beams. Make sure that you won’t miss the Marble Boat, which is something extraordinary to behold. It sits in the water as if docked to a pier. ☛ Check more about Summer Palace | Summer Palace Boat Ride Guide

Beijing is one of the most popular travel destinations in China. When you visit the Summer Palace, you should not miss out other highlights in Beijing, such as the Most Magnificent Imperial Palace in the World - Forbidden City, Brilliant World Heritage Site - Temple of Heaven, etc. and the most recommended is the Great Wall. Check more about Top 14 Beijing Tourist Attractions.

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Suzhou classical gardens are the noteworthy fortunes in the architectural history of China, and they are also the hot theme the works in of the poets and literary men. Among these gardens, Humble Administrator’s Garden (拙政园) is the largest and most prestigious one. Visiting Humble Administrator’s Garden, you can fully appreciate the never-ending superb design from the featured buildings, zigzagging bridges, clean ponds, colorful flowers etc.

There are many distinctive architectures in the Humble Administrator’s Garden imitated by many other gardens, which make it an archetype of imperial gardens. The Drifting Fragrance Hall is featured in the walls with panoptic windows, which offering a wonderful sight of the outside scenery. The Secluded Pavilion of Phoenix Tree and Bamboo is backing against the corridor and confronted with a pond. It shows a strong atmosphere of elegance and quietness. Whom-to-Sit-with Pavilion is an interesting pavilion. From it fan-shaped window, you can see another pavilion which looks like the pattern printed on the fan. Apart from the amazing buildings, you get many other things to do in the Humble Administrator’s Garden, like enjoying colorful flowers during the Azalea Festival (March ~ May) and the Lotus Flower Festival (June ~ October), admiring the delicate Suzhou Embroidery show in Millet Fragrance Hall etc. Check more about Humble Administrator's Garden.

Being so remarkable, classical gardens of Suzhou are generally acknowledged as the great masterpieces in the world history of gardening and listed in the World Cultural Heritages. Lingering Garden, Master of the Nets Garden, Lion Grove Garden, etc. together with Tiger Hill in Suzhou also worth your discovery. Check more about Top Ten Classical Gardens of Suzhou.

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Unlike the Humble Administrator’s Garden, the Lingering Garden (留园) won’t draw your interest at the first sight. The buildings in the garden were not grand usually, but the whole garden creates a poetic and pictorial atmosphere. Although the Lingering Garden is much smaller than other three gardens, the design is ingenious as well. In the limited garden, the gardeners are able to build infinite scenes. As you walk in the garden, you can admire the moving pictures with change of light and locations. The varied perforated windows are the highlights of the Lingering Garden. In addition to function of lighting and ventilating, they also act as magical photo frames bringing you the great view.

In the Lingering Gardens, the Three Wonders are a must to visit, including Cloud-crowned Peak, Celestial Hall of Five Peaks and Natural Picture of Sunshine after Rain. The Cloud-crowned Peak is a huge Taihu Stone showing slenderness, crinkles, transparency and easiness to penetrate. Honored as the No. 1 Hall in Jiangnan, the Celestial Hall of Five Peaks is the largest hall in the garden. All the beams and columns are made of costly Namu. The Natural Picture of Sunshine after Rain is a natural marble picture, from which you can recognize the mountains, stream, waterfall, clouds and sun. The Lingering Garden also provides daily opera performance (Suzhou Opera Show, Kunqu Opera Show and Wuxi Opera Show). Check more about Lingering Garden.

While in Suzhou, you can not only enjoy yourself in the beautiful Suzhou gardens, but also visit Suzhou Silk Museum to get close with the exquisite silk, or take a boat trip in the No. 1 Water Town in China - Zhouzhuang Water Town, etc. Besides, due to the proximity of the location, you can also extend your trip to the nearby Shanghai and Hangzhou. Check more about Top Attractions in Suzhou.

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Chengde Imperial Summer Resort, also called Chengde Mountain Resort (承德避暑山庄), is a large complex of imperial palaces and gardens located in Chengde of Hebei. Combined with Forbidden City and Confucius Temple, it is one of the three largest ancient building groups. It once was the summer palace of the emperors in Qing dynasty. In fact, Chengde Imperial Summer Resort is also the epitome of Chinese landscape and landform, with waterscape in southeast, mountain views in northwest and plain area in central parts. It is a milestone in the history of Chinese garden and a great achievement of Chinese classical gardens. Because of its vast and rich collections of Chinese landscape and architecture, Chengde Imperial Summer Resort is regarded as a culmination of all variety of Chinese gardens.

The garden is made up of Palace Area, Mountain Area, Lake Area and Plain Area. People usually describe Chengde Imperial Summer Resort as “garden in mountain and mountain in garden”. It is also famous for its 72 scenic spots which were named by Kangxi Emperor and Qianlong Emperor. There were many scenic spots in Chengde Imperial Summer Resorts were copied from many other landscaped gardens or temples. For instance, the Zhijing Yundi is modeled upon of Sudi and Baidi in the West Lake and the famed Potarak Doctrine is a replica of the Potala Palace in Lhasa. As a result, tourists are able to admire the different garden-styles in only one garden. Check more about Chengde Mountain Resort.

Chengde is a prefecture-level city in Hebei, about 225 km (3 hours' drive or 1 hour's high speed train) away from Beijing. It was regarded as the second capital of the Qing Dynasty after Beijing because many emperors spent half a year staying there to avoid summer heat. For expats in Beijing or other nearby cities, it is a wonderful place for one weekend's trip. Check more about Top Attractions in Chengde.

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Apart from the above top four gardens, there are many other beautiful gardens in China deserving your visit. And the following three gardens are also loved by most of tourists.

Yuyuan Garden - Similar to Suzhou classical gardens, Yuyuan Garden in Shanghai enjoys a good reputation for its artistic layout. Taking advantage of unique skill combing architecture with the surrounding scenery, the gardeners created Yuyuan Garden that is peaceful heavens away from the world’s turmoil. However, walking out of Yuyuan Garden, you can enjoy the busy bazar, including various shops, popular restuarant, and some other attractions.

Norbulingka Park - Norbulingka Park in Lhasa, once to be the summer palace of Dalai Lama, is a joyous garden for Tibetan people now. In this garden, you can enjoy the Tibetan-style palace. There are over 100 spcies of rare plants from Himalayan grown in the park. In high-altitude Lhasa, Norbulingka is the best place to enjoy the vivid plants. During the Shoton Festival, the local people will gather in Norbulingka to have a picnic and enjoy the Tibetan Opera.

The Master of the Nets Garden - Suzhou classical gardens are well-known in recreating natural beauty in miniature, which is perfectly illustrated in the Master of the Nets Garden in Suzhou. Covering a small area less than 1/6 of the Humble Administrator’s Garden, the Master of the Nets Garden is a compact but ideally-proportioned garden. From May to November, there will be a night garden traditional art performance.

In addition, as the art works that fully demonstrates the charm of Jiangnan, there are still many other charming Jiangnan gardens worth your discovery, including Canglang Pavilion in Suzhou, Zhan Garden in Nanjing, Jichang Garden in Wuxi and Geyuan Garden in Yangzhou etc.

Are you interested in Chinese classical gardens and do you want to explore the garden art more profound? Just feel free to contact us and our travel consultant will customize a private garden tour for you. And all the itinerary and details will be made according to you own needs and interests.

During the tour, you will get rid of the hustle and public transportation and troublesome navigation. Our local guides and drivers will escort you to any attractions with speed and convenience, and take care of you all the time. The professional tour guide can explain you the history and culture of the different gardens, the architectural art, as well as the gardening skills.