Jinyun Garden

Jinyun Garden

The Taiyuan municipal exhibition garden is named “Jinyun Garden.” Its overall layout draws on traditional Taiyuan gardening techniques, skillfully using the terrain to layer hills and manage water features. With its undulating water landscapes and naturally rolling rock formations, it highlights the architectural style of Taiyuan gardens and the charm of their plants, expressing the city’s inclusive and diverse cultural heritage, and reflecting the gardening style of Taiyuan gardens as “graceful in form, moderate in scale, exquisite in craftsmanship, and rich in culture.”

The entire garden unfolds its landscape sequence around a natural-style pond—“Jinshui” (Jin Water)—artfully recreating some of the most famous existing garden landscapes. At the entrance of “Jinyun Garden” stands the renowned “Duìyuè” (Praising the Virtue) Archway from the Jin Temple, featuring a four-pillar, three-bay structure with a single-eave hip-and-gable roof.

The entire structure is exquisitely delicate, splendidly elegant, and impressively majestic. The garden also includes the Zhenqu Pavilion, another distinctive building of the Jin Temple, with a simple ridge and four corners, a hip-and-gable roof, and an ancient yet simple structure. Its railings and lintels are finely carved. Standing in the pavilion and looking down, water leaps through the ten openings of the “三七分水” (30-70 water diversion) stone dam, capturing the essence of the “Jinshui” as “jade-like flowing water over emerald-green grass.” The important symbol of Taiyuan, the “Lingxiao Twin Towers,” is also represented in the garden. These towers have an octagonal floor plan and thirteen stories, standing tall and majestic, with a robust and graceful presence. Climbing to the platform at the base of the towers offers a panoramic view of the entire garden.

The garden mainly features local tree species from Taiyuan that are well-suited to the climate of Shenyang. Chinese scholar trees and Chinese pines are the primary plant materials, complemented by peach trees, willows, and other flowering plants, highlighting the grandeur and antiquity of the architecture and evoking the poetic ambiance of “Jinshui” as “rippling waves, dragon-scale patterns, and green grass.”