Friday, September 14, 2007

Kubota Gardens - August 29











The Kubota Gardens are located in Seattle. They cover 4.5 acres. It is a very peaceful walk through the gardens and you can see many different types of trees and shrubs, including a 32-foot long Weeping Blue Atlas cedar.

(Information from the tour brochure):
The Japanese garden portion features a spring-fed pond and stones left in the Seattle area 12,000 years ago by the last glacier. A Heart Bridge is like a traditional bridge in Mr. Kubota's home island. The Moon Bridge symbolizes the difficulty of living a good life: "Hard to walk up and hard to walk down." The Mountainside area was built by the Kubota family to celebrate the 1962 World Fair in Seattle. It offers a miniature walk into the mountains. The Lookout offers a wooden umbrella and a grand view of the garden 65 feet below.

This is the text of the memorial stone in garden:
"Fujitaro Kubota was born in 1879, in Kochi Prefecture on the island of Shikoku, Japan. He immigrated to America in 1907 and established his home. In 1927 he acquired this land in order to make a large garden. With his own hands he cleared the land, dug several ponds and cut the trees to build the garden. Mr. Kubota studied landscaping, suffered hard work and put great effort into this project. The garden was finally completed in 1962 and in that year this memorial stone was erected. It was the eighty-third year of Fujitaro Kubota."