Site of Castle Flower Garden
During the Edo period (1603–1867), the castle was staffed with gardeners and flower-arrangers who decorated its residences and reception halls with seasonal displays. This area once contained the castle’s flower garden, but today the vestiges of a nearby well are all that remains. According to a record from the mid-eighteenth century, flowers such as rhododendrons, Rugosa roses, hydrangeas, and peonies were popular with the ruling warrior class. Some blooms, including chrysanthemums and plum blossoms, were associated with nobility or purity. Samurai are said to have shunned camellias, whose tops tend to fall off when they begin to wilt, resembling the heads of slain warriors. Surprisingly, the gardens of daimyo are recorded as having also contained eggplants (nasu), suggesting that some of them doubled as vegetable gardens.