Portland, Oregon's Classical Chinese Garden, or "Lan Su Yuan," as it is known in Chinese, is a pleasant oasis in an urban setting. Designed to take advantage of the seasons, the garden offers a place to appreciate balance and nature year-round.
Water, Stone, Plants, Architecture, Poetry As a Ming-style urban garden, Lan Su Yuan weaves the five elements considered essential in a formal garden of this dynasty: water, stone, plants, architecture, and poetry. Each of the five elements is within view virtually everywhere you look. The architecture is perhaps the most immediately compelling to the Western eye, with its swooping rooflines, heavy ornamentation, and unusual shapes and placement of windows and columns. Buildings include five pavilions (Knowing the Fish Pavilion, Painted Boat in Misty Rain boat-shaped pavilion, a small square pavilion, a waterside pavilion, and a pavilion in the lake dedicated to the moon), a lounge house, a teahouse, a study, an entry hall, and a gift shop. My favorite was the study, a room of great simplicity and excellent light, adorned with warm woods, and affording peek-a-boo views of the gardens beyond.
While "garden" in Chinese implies much more than plants, plants play a key role. In this space of one city block, over 500 species are planted. Lan Su Yuan is a sister garden to a garden in Suzhou, China. While the plants in the Portland garden are from Pacific Northwest donors, they are designed to reflect the types and interrelationships of the plants in the Suzhou garden.
Water drips from falls and springs and is present in the garden's central body, 8,000 square-foot Zither Lake. The day I visited, a gentle rain fell as well, which only added to the beauty of the outdoor spaces within the garden.
The elements of poetry and stone are everywhere as well. Chinese characters adorn nearly every column, panel, and gateway, offering wisdom and inspiration for those fortunate enough to be able to read it. If you choose a guided tour, docents translate some of the inscriptions. As for the stone, you'll find it great and small, from free-form natural sculptures to rock gardens among the plants to mosaic-like tiles in ever changing patterns underfoot.
"Never Twice the Same" Portland, like many parts of China, has four definite seasons. It is warm in the summer, cold in the winter. It receives rain, snow, sunshine, and fog. The design of the gardens, from its interplay of open- and closed-roofed areas to its selection of plants, takes advantage of this. The non-profit Portland Classical Chinese Garden organization, that runs the garden for the City of Portland, encourages frequent visits and offers memberships to facilitate this.
There are, indeed, many ways to enjoy the facility. Besides the obvious difference of coming in the various seasons of the year and varying weather, the experience of visiting with a tour guide is quite different from doing a self-guided tour. A solo visit is more contemplative than one with a group. And choosing to linger in the rooms and/or take tea in the teahouse makes for a different experience than rushing through. Note that most of the garden's walkways are ADA accessible as well.
Planning Your Visit Admission to the gardens is $7 for adults, $6 for seniors, $5.50 for students, and children under 5 are admitted free. Annual memberships, including free admission, are $25 for students and seniors and $35 for adults. Family and group memberships are also available, as are enhanced memberships with additional benefits.
The garden is located northwest of downtown Portland in Old Town/Chinatown with its main entrance on NW Third and Everett. It is open from 9 a.m-6 p.m. April 1-October 31, and from 10 a.m.-5 p.m. the rest of the year. Tours are free of charge and are given most days at noon and 1 p.m.
Sally O'Neal Coates is a Pacific Northwest native whose urban, suburban, and wilderness rambles have been chronicled weekly on Sportsmansguide.com since 2000.