Next to the busiest station in the busiest part of the busiest city in the world, Shinjuku Gyoen is one of Tokyo’s largest parks at almost 150 acres. Laid out by a French engineer on the site of a feudal mansion, the park was initially an imperial garden before its opening to the public after World War 2. It’s a wonderful place to escape the orderly madness of the surrounding streets, only the occasional train engine and station announcement drifting over the outer walls to intrude on the studied hush.
The 200-yen entrance fee gets you into several very distinct spaces. The English Landscape Garden at the centre of the park is instantly reminiscent of London or New York; wide, cedar, plane and sycamore bordered clipped lawns busy with families sprawled across jackets and picnic mats. The jagged peaks of Shinjuku and the lonely spire of Tokyo Tower hang above the tree line, invisible once you’re a few metres along the paths running through the small forest towards Tamamo Pond and the Greenhouse, which has beautiful water lilies, orchids, towering palms and two floors of subtropical plants. At the back, the French Formal Gardens are small but probably the most photographed part of the whole park, the symmetrical rose bushes combining Mozart, Moonlight, Black Tea, Prosperity and a hundred other exotica.
But my own favourite is the Japanese Traditional Garden, at the eastern end of the string of ponds splitting the centre of the park, whose tightly wrapped, gently undulating mounds are dotted with manicured pine, stone lanterns, pavilions and shrubs. Teahouses stand on small islands linked by wooden bridges and the chrysanthemum displays here in October are almost as famous as the cherry blossom that explodes across the park every April.
The park is a short walk from the New South exit of Shinjuku Station and is open daily from 9am-4pm (11am-3:30pm for the greenhouse).