What to Do at Manabe Garden
A Grand Experiment in Growing Things
Anyone with an affinity for growing things should visit Manabe Garden. This sample garden showcases trees, flowers, border plants, and grasses in a botanically diverse environment. Landscape designers, architects, and gardeners come here to observe, research, and plan their gardening strategies. Besides getting new ideas for tending a garden, visitors can buy all of the plants, garden supplies, and tools at the garden center. (Check first, though, about getting them home.)
Manabe Garden has many different environments to explore: the Japanese Garden and carp pond, Rugosa Rose Hill, pine forest, Monster Garden, and an eight-meter waterfall and trout pond. The card pond is filled with nishikigoi (brocade carp). Visitors can feed these vividly hued fish. Hokkaido Ezo squirrels inhabit the Forest Floor Garden, where they have their own play apparatus.
Two buildings in the Japanese Garden are noteworthy. One is known as Shinshokaku. This building was in Obihiro before being dismantled and brought to Manabe Garden in 1962. Crown Prince Yoshihito (later Emperor Taisho, 1879-1926) once stayed there when he visited the town. The nearby tearoom was also originally part of Shinshokaku.
The café serves coffee, tea, homemade cakes and food. You may sit indoors or outdoors, and even carry your food elsewhere in the garden for a private picnic.
Manabe Garden provides free umbrellas and rain boots for guests, so visitors never need to worry about touring the garden in the rain or getting wet from dew. The main path is designed for universal accessibility, and much of the garden is wheelchair friendly.
