Fort Worth Botanic Garden Japanese garden
— a quiet room cut out of a Texas city.
Not only on a wall.
Fort Worth Botanic Garden Japanese garden, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
“Seven and a half acres of koi ponds, stone lanterns, and Japanese maples folded into the older Botanic Garden on the west side of Fort Worth. A moon bridge crosses one of the three connected ponds. The teahouse and pagoda sit above the water, and a meditation garden of raked gravel holds one corner. Cherries open in March; the maples turn deep in November. It reads quiet for the middle of a city this size, which is the thing the garden was built to do.
The place, in three passes.
The Japanese Garden occupies roughly 7.5 acres inside the Fort Worth Botanic Garden, on the west side of Fort Worth off University Drive. The larger Botanic Garden was founded in 1934 and is the oldest major botanic garden in Texas; the Japanese Garden was added in 1973, designed by Kingsley Wu and built into a former gravel quarry that gave it the natural basin its three connected ponds sit in. The Botanic Garden Society and the City of Fort Worth co-manage the property today, with the Japanese Garden operating on its own admission as part of the larger ticket.
Two windows pull the most visitors. Cherry blossom season runs through the second half of March, when the yoshino and kwanzan cherries open across the lower paths. The Japanese maple turn comes in November, deep red against the moon bridge and the pagoda. Koi feedings happen daily, and the spring Mums Festival and an autumn Moonlight Garden evening event sit on the calendar each year. Summer in Fort Worth is hot, and the basin holds shade better than most of the city; an early-morning visit catches the garden at its quietest.
Entrance is through the Fort Worth Botanic Garden at 3220 Botanic Garden Boulevard, off University Drive west of the Cultural District. The garden is generally open daily with shorter winter hours, closed on a small set of major holidays; admission has been ticketed since 2020 to support upkeep. Inside, paved and gravel paths circle the three ponds, cross the moon bridge, and pass the Mikoshi house, the teahouse, and the meditation garden. The Kimbell, the Modern, and the Amon Carter sit a short drive east in the Cultural District and pair well with a morning here.
