Visiting San Francisco Japanese Tea Garden - a quintessential garden of leisure

Yes, the San Francisco Japanese Tea Garden has a tea house with tea and fortune cookies. However, it is not a tea garden in the literal sense of the term, which is generally a more private space to host a tea ceremony. This spacious garden is a place of leisure ensconced within four gates inside the larger Golden Gate Park, where you can quietly stroll around and absorb the breathtakingly beautiful landscape. Each section of the 5-acre San Francisco Japanese Tea Garden harmoniously blends in with the others. Credit goes to Japanese landscape architect Makoto Hagiwara for expanding this botanical marvel from an exhibit depicting a Japanese village at the 1894 California Midwinter International Exposition to the stunning masterpiece that it is today. Starting from the entrance gate and culminating with enjoyable refreshments at the tea house, there is much to take in as you stroll around the San Francisco Japanese Tea Garden.

A serene Buddha called Amazarashi-No-Hotoke, originally cast in Japan and lovingly restored in 2000, is a dominant feature near the Long Bridge. Read about it in the Art and Architecture SF blog.

Buddha statue

Another prominent feature is the lovely bronze blue lantern. Known as the Lantern of Peace, it is a gift from the children of Japan handed over by the Japanese Consul General in 1953.

Lantern of Peace

Something that you just cannot miss is the unusual wooden bridge in the shape of a half-drum, the other half reflected in the water below. In Japanese, it is called the Taiko Bashi. Many visitors go up the challenging steps to stand at the bridge's mid-point to have their photos taken.

Drum Bridge

In the main pond of the garden, you will be thrilled to catch glimpses of golden koi (carp, which are freshwater fish).

Koi pond

Amid all the greenery you will come across an unusual space where sand and gravel cover the ground. This is a garden in itself, known as a Zen Garden designed by landscape artist Nagao Sakurai. The unusual patterns you see on the ground here represent undulating waves. 

An inscription in this section (the photo on the left) explains that Zen monks were impressed with the landscape and rock work in Chinese gardens and designed dry landscape scenes for their own temple yards. Stones were used to resemble hills and mountains, islands and waterfalls. Gravel on sand symbolically represented bodies of water like rivers and streams. 

These dry landscape gardens took on religious and mythological meaning, creating a space of peace and meditation for the monks in their search for enlightenment. 

Zen Garden

One of the four gates of the tea garden is the Temple Gate which you can glimpse from various angles. Adjacent to it is the beautiful five-storied red Pagoda, said to have been designed as a Buddhist's treasure tower, and below it a small waterfall makes its graceful way down a small hill.

Temple Gate

Across the botanical expanse, you will see many stone lanterns with distinct features starting with the base, the stem and the platform for the lamp, and ending with a small structure resembling a jewel on the roof's crown.

Stone Lanterns

Then of course, there are the trees, plants and floral blooms thriving everywhere, thanks to the dedicated professional gardeners who maintain the San Francisco Japanese Tea Garden.

It is only fitting to end a visit to a tea garden with a cup of tea! So relax in the quaint tea house to enjoy light refreshments with your cup of tea, after which you can head upstairs to the gift shop to take home some souvenirs of your memorable visit to the San Francisco Tea Garden.

Contact information

Garden Address

75 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive

San Francisco, CA 94118

Timings: The garden is open daily, from 9 a.m. to 5.45 p.m. during the summer months, and from 9 a.m. to 4.45 p.m. during the winter. 

Website: San Francisco Japanese Tea Garden

To book tickets online visit https://gggp.org/japanese-tea-garden/