Located in the northeastern part of Suzhou city, with a total area about 4 hectares, is the largest private garden in Suzhou, as well as one of the four most famous classic gardens in China (the others are: Summer Palace, Mountain Resort of Chengde and Garden for Lingering in Suzhou). More than half of the garden is made up of magnificent ponds, various buildings of pavilions, terraces, chambers, and towers located by the edge of the ponds in a natural, unsophisticated, and appropriate composition which creates the illusion that the amazing garden is floating on water.
The Humble Administrator's Garden is the representative of gardens in Suzhou. Around 1513 during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), the imperial inspector Wang Xianchen, being sick of officialdom, returned to Suzhou after retiring from public life and built this garden and named it The Humble Administrator's Garden inspired by the essay "To cultivate my garden and sell my vegetable crop is the policy of humble man".
The entire garden can be divided into three parts: eastern, central, and western. The central part of the garden is the cream of all. It centers around Yuanxiang Tang pavilion. Two artificial islands linked to each other in the lotus pond north of the pavilion are densely overgrown with bamboo plants and trees. The Refined Stone House is in this part. What makes this yard amazing is that many kinds of rare stones are stored here, which can be hardly seen in other places.
The buildings in the western part of the garden are properly arranged by the lake, in which the Hall of the Thirty-Six Mandarin Ducks and the Hall of Eighteen Camellias are most important. To the end of west garden lies a bonsai garden which is considered treasure of this garden, where about 700, more than 50 kinds of beauties of the bonsais are put on display, which is worthy of visiting.
Bonsai Garden and Refined Stone House are two bright pearls in the Humble Administrator's Garden.
