Discover Suzhou
Couple's Garden Retreat
耦园
A UNESCO-listed garden built as a married couple's double retreat, with an east garden for him and a west garden for her, water on three sides and almost no tour groups. It is the easiest classical garden in Suzhou to have largely to yourself.
The story
What makes this place special
Lu Jin, prefect of Baoning, built the original garden in 1874; Shen Bingcheng, magistrate of Susong, then bought it and rebuilt it in the form that survives, and gave it the present name, which plays on the idea of a married couple and on the garden's two matching halves. It is small, about a third of a hectare, and was added to the Classical Gardens of Suzhou World Heritage listing in 2001. It sits at a canal junction in the Pingjiang historic district and is surrounded by water on three sides.
What you’ll discover
The unusual thing here is the plan: the family residence sits in the middle with a garden on either side, east and west, instead of the single garden around a pond that every other Suzhou garden uses. The east garden is the main one, with a yellowstone grotto and a pond ringed by a covered walkway tying the buildings together, plus a small orchard annex; the west is tighter, built around a small grotto and a library wing. Because the garden backs onto the canal on three sides, you can arrive at it by boat, and the water views look outward over working waterway rather than inward.
A little local insight
Good to know before you go
- Arrive by boat if you can. The garden has its own canal frontage and coming in off the water, rather than through the land gate, is how it was designed to be entered.
- It is inside the Pingjiang Road district, a few minutes down a side lane, and it is the thing on that street that visitors do not know is there. If Pingjiang Road feels like a shopping street, come in here.
- Compare the two gardens deliberately. The point of the place is the mirrored pair either side of the house, and they are different in character - one open and watery, one enclosed and bookish.
- It is small, so an hour is plenty, and it is a good late-afternoon addition rather than a main event.
- Of all the Suzhou gardens this is the most convincingly a house with gardens rather than a garden with buildings, which makes it the best one for understanding how these places were actually lived in.
When to come
Late afternoon, when the Pingjiang crowds are on the main street and the garden is almost empty. Spring and autumn; the covered walkways make it workable in rain.
Getting around
Moderate. The halls, courtyards and much of the covered walkway are flat paving, so a good deal of the garden is reachable, but there are high timber thresholds between the residential halls, the grottoes are stepped stone, and the lanes approaching it from Pingjiang Road are narrow worn flagstone. The canal boat landing involves steps. A wheelchair user will need help at thresholds and will miss the rockeries.
Worth knowing before you go
Approach it by water: the Pingjiang canal boats tie up nearby, and the garden's water gate is the whole point of the design.
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