YASUGI, Shimane Prefecture–The sprawling gardens at the Adachi Museum of Art here are simply the best.
That’s the conclusion of the Journal of Japanese Gardening, a U.S. publication better known in Japan as Sukiya Living Magazine, which ranked the gardens as the nation’s most splendid for the 20th consecutive year in 2022.
Introduced in 2003, the rankings are determined by gardening experts and cover 1,000 Japanese gardens across the country. The magazine features the top 50 gardens every year.
Although the museum’s gardens were designed by a famous gardener, museum founder and local businessman Zenko Adachi added arrangements of his own to complete the landscape.
The picturesque gardens encompass roughly 170,000 square meters and consist of six areas, including the Dry Landscape Garden, the Moss Garden and the White Gravel and Pine Garden.
The gardens boast numerous varieties of trees and flowers, including red and black pines, “satsuki” and “tsutsuji” azaleas and maples.
Gardeners and staff members work to maintain the grounds year-round.
“The more information technology becomes widespread and accelerated in society, the more people seek to return to nature and develop nostalgia for handiwork to find peace of mind,” museum director Takanori Adachi said in a statement.
“Globally promoting the charms of the Adachi museum, which boasts both the vivid presence of nature and aesthetic elegance, is a great opportunity to make known the wonders of Japanese culture,” he added.
The Katsura Imperial Villa in Kyoto ranked second in the list.
Four other gardens in Shimane Prefecture also ranked among the top 50, including Minamikan ryokan in Matsue (fourth), the Yushien garden also in the prefectural capital (20th), Kokokuji temple in Izumo (28th) and the Yunosuke’s Hotel Chorakuen in Matsue (29th).