Parks & Gardens

Two traditions sit in this category and they behave differently. A Japanese landscape garden is a composed thing — sightlines, water, stone and trees pruned over decades to produce a specific view from a specific place — and it is almost always ticketed, generally a few hundred yen, because that pruning is continuous and expensive. A city or prefectural park is public open space with paths, playgrounds and seasonal planting, and is usually free.

For a landscape garden, budget forty-five minutes to an hour and a half and walk it in the direction the paths suggest, because the composition assumes you will. The etiquette is lighter than at a temple, with one real rule: stay off the moss. Moss lawns are the product of years and they do not recover from being walked on, which is why they are roped and why the ropes look decorative rather than serious.

Season drives this category harder than any other except festivals. Blossom runs from late March to mid-April across most of the country, later as you go north or up; autumn colour runs roughly late October into November on the same gradient reversed. Both bring extended opening hours and evening illuminations at the larger gardens, and both bring the crowds that make an early arrival worth an hour's sleep.

The thing visitors most often miss is that these gardens are designed for all four seasons, not one. A garden in February — bare structure, snow on stone, plum blossom coming — is showing you what it actually is, with nobody in it, at the same admission price.

The useful first question is what you want the garden to do. If you want the photograph, go for the season and accept the crowd; if you want the experience the garden was designed to produce, go at opening time in an unfashionable month and have it to yourself. These are not the same visit and trying to have both is how people end up disappointed in famous gardens.

For a first landscape garden, prefer a stroll garden with a pond over a dry rock garden. The stroll garden explains itself as you walk — the view changes deliberately at each turn, and you can feel the design working. A dry garden is a more demanding object that rewards knowing something first, and fifteen minutes on a viewing platform in a crowd is not the way in.

Second, prefer a garden attached to what it was built for — a castle, a villa, a temple — over one moved or reconstructed. Understanding that this was somebody's private view, and who they were, is most of the interest.

Third: check whether the garden has an evening opening in the season you are visiting. Illuminated autumn maples or night blossom at a serious garden are the best hour in this whole category, they are ticketed separately, and they sell out.

For a park rather than a garden, the criteria invert entirely — go for space, for the picnic, for the playground, and go on a weekend when the local families are there, because that is the point of them.

Walking on the moss. The most common and the most costly. The roped area is roped for a reason that takes years to repair.

Going for blossom on the calendar. Peak dates move by up to a fortnight with the year and with the latitude and altitude. Track the forecast in the week before, not the average date.

Arriving at eleven in peak season. The garden that is transcendent at eight is a queue at eleven. This is the whole difference and it costs one early morning.

Assuming the ticket includes the buildings. A villa, a teahouse or a museum inside a garden is very often a separate charge, sometimes with a timed entry.

Skipping the garden in winter. Off-season is when you can actually see the structure, and the admission is the same. Some of the best visits in the category are in February.

Treating a dry garden as a photograph. Fifteen minutes sitting on the veranda is the intended use; two minutes standing and shooting is not, and people wonder afterwards why it did nothing for them.

Wearing shoes that are hard to remove. Many garden buildings, teahouses and viewing halls are shoes-off.

Missing last admission. Typically thirty minutes before closing, and gardens close earlier in winter than their summer hours suggest.