Heze Ningxiang Garden

　　     Ningxiang Garden, also known as "Zhengchun Garden," is located in Yuelou Administrative Village, Yuecheng Subdistrict, east of Heze City. Built in the late Yuan and early Ming dynasties, it was originally owned by the Yuan family and called the "Yuan Family Hall" garden. Later, when the Yuan family declined, it was purchased by He Yingrui, a Jinshi (successful candidate in the highest imperial examinations) in the 38th year of the Wanli reign during the Ming Dynasty, who served as Minister of Works and was from Herou Village east of Heze City. It was then also called "He Garden." The famous "He Garden White" and "He Garden Red" peonies originated from this garden. This garden flourished for about four hundred years. According to an elderly man named Liu, whose family had served as gardeners for three generations, in 1933, when Mr. Feng Yuxiang retired to Mount Tai and sought to beautify the area, he bought 500 wintersweet plants from this garden in one go.

　　    Even the large red peonies from "Xia Guang" in Zhaolou and Liji were purchased from this garden at that time. This shows how thriving the floral scene at "Ningxiang Garden" was back then. The seven-character regulated poem "Peony," written by He Yingrui after he retired to his hometown, depicts the peonies of He Garden: “For twenty years I dreamed of my home garden’s blooms, / Now they’re in flower, I’ve come home just in time. / A few new names have joined the old catalog, / While many familiar breeds have changed their line. / Swaying in the breeze, they show a hundred graceful forms, / Their charm forever shifting; / Heavy with dew, they cluster, their shadows in disarray. / Tell the God of Spring to keep these guests in delight, / And let the sunny days guard their glowing rays.” The garden declined only after the Japanese invasion of Heze at the end of 1937. Currently, only over 10 acres remain, with less than 3 acres dedicated to peonies, featuring more than 70 varieties of peonies and over 40 other types of flowers such as thorny roses, erythrina, jade fruits, ginkgo, trumpet creepers, yellow bud balls, crape myrtles, roses, pomegranate ornamentals, papayas, persimmons, dragon-headed dates, and crabapple with iron stems. The garden also contains over a hundred-year-old junipers, several-hundred-year-old wintersweets and lilacs, a thousand-year-old emerald blue pine, and a piece of rockery. Near "Ningxiang Garden," the tomb of He Yingrui is surrounded by ancient cypresses that form a dense, towering forest.

　　 Heze City, Shandong Province