Kobayashi Park in Tacoma, WA
The Kobayashi Park in Tacoma, WA, is an oasis of tranquility and beauty. It’s a perfect place to find serenity because it was designed to “Easing one’s Heart” while also providing a tranquil space for Japanese cultural events. The park includes many traditional elements, including ornamental plants, water features, and stone lanterns. It is the only Japanese garden in Washington State.
Kobayashi Park is one of Tacoma’s hidden gems. If you are looking for a place to relax, stroll around this beautiful Japanese garden and let its tranquility wash over your soul!
About the Kobayashi Park
The Kobayashi Park is a Japanese Garden located in Tacoma, Washington. The park features a significant collection of plants and trees typical of Japan’s temperate climate zones. This includes ginkgoes, maples, and pines, among others. The Japanese Garden also consists of a large pond with two islands, bridges, and teahouses. In the late 1930s, a local family donated over 200 cherry blossom trees to Kobayashi Park.
Kobayashi Park is located at Kobayashi Park Drive University Place, WA 98467, and only takes about an hour to explore. The park features several different walking paths that meander through groves of flowers and tall evergreens and around the large pond with two islands. There are also trails across from where you can enjoy a nice picnic or barbecue under towering pine trees. Another great thing this Japanese Garden includes is many places for people to relax, such as benches throughout the site, teahouses on islands within ponds, footbridges along pathways, and traditional Japanese gardens full of stone lanterns and koi fish ponds, among many other things.
Facts about the Kobayashi Park
The Japanese garden in Tacoma was listed on the National Register of Historic Places for Washington State. It is also designated as a City Landmark and named an official “City Beautiful” site by Seattle Art Museum Exhibition at Kobayashi Park.
This park includes more than five acres filled with beautiful trees, plants, flowers, ponds, and bridges throughout it: Kobayashi Park Tacoma WA. There’s even a tiny tea house where visitors can stop to relax under strategically placed umbrellas or enjoy some green tea. At the same time, they admire this beautifully designed place filled with waterfalls and other natural elements. Anyone who wants to walk through nature will love getting lost among all of these features! Since there are more than 100 trees in this park, it is estimated that the average age of these plants is about 50 years old. This makes them all very valuable and uniquely beautiful!
It has many beautiful gardens and waterfalls, sculptures, and pagodas. The park was made to honor the Kobayashi family, who were immigrants from Japan in 1888. They contributed significantly to Tacoma’s history by helping build railroads and opening businesses like hotels and restaurants. This garden is open for public use year-round (except during winter months). Special events occasionally happen, such as an annual Sakura Festival where visitors come out to see cherry blossoms blooming each spring.
Activities in Kobayashi Park
Visitors can enjoy the gardens from dawn to dusk year-round for free! In addition to being beautiful places to sit back and relax, Kobayashi Park serves as an outdoor classroom where students can learn about Asian culture first hand through hands-on activities, including origami folding classes or calligraphy lessons taught at the park’s main pavilion house. If you’re strapped for time but still want a taste of what this fantastic little oasis has to offer, take a stroll along with one of the park’s three walking trails where you can enjoy a peaceful walk through serene waterfalls and ornamental gardens.
This park offers many different types of events, including festivals during which guests can enjoy performances by various artists from all around America! These festivals include arts & crafts booths where the visitors can purchase one-of-a-kind handmade items. Kobayashi Park is open all year round, weather permitting, and offers transportation for those who are physically challenged, making the park even more accessible to everyone!
The garden also hosts special events throughout the year like an annual Sakura Matsuri Cherry Blossom Festival held in late April or early May to celebrate the beauty of nature with music, food stalls, and flower viewing opportunities under blooming; sakura trees that are over 50 years old! There’s no better time than now to visit this peaceful park while it’s quiet outside.
What’s in there at Kobayashi Park?
Kobayashi Park has over one hundred trees and shrubs planted in the traditional Japanese design style, which includes maple, crab apple, azalea, rhododendron, flowering cherry tree larch tree, etc. The park also features several ponds with koi fish as well as other waterfowl. Many places for visitors to sit down along the walking paths or enjoy an outdoor lunch at picnic tables are found throughout the park.
There are two Japanese gardens within Kobayashi Park: one contains a particular pond built for people who love aquatic life to appreciate turtles, fish, and frogs. The other garden has tall evergreen trees with different types of moss growing on their trunks, making them look like they’re covered in green fur! That’s because there is no grass or ground cover in either garden, only rocks, gravel, and soil. Visitors can see both gardens at once when they walk through the small pathway between each area since they will cross paths every time they make a complete circuit around the park.
One of its ponds is home to many turtles who love to sunbathe on rocks and logs, waiting for visitors from all over Tacoma, WA, to bring them some food. These turtles are extremely friendly since they’re used to being fed by people who live near or within this park! Visitors will not be able to see much fish at this location because very little vegetation grows below water level, leaving most of it wholly exposed so these creatures can enjoy their habitat without any obstructions!
What to See in Kobayashi Park?
The Kobayashi Park is a quiet, relaxing place with lots of trees and grass. There are also many large rocks in this area that you might have seen. You will also see horse chestnuts growing from some of these rocks, which is an exciting sight to behold when their flowers bloom every springtime. This part of Tacoma has been around for more than 100 years already, so it’s pretty fascinating to hear about its history as well, especially since there are stories about how the land was once used during WWII by soldiers based at Fort Lewis or McChord Air Force Base.
The topography reminds you that you are still on American soil. Still, your eyes will see oriental plants growing around small ponds with fish swimming lazily under swaying lilies and other aquatic vegetation. Trails wind through forested woodland areas where birds chirp among bamboo groves and Benkei-style pine trees complete with fantastic bark wrinkling down their trunks like tight ropes, all adding up to give one the feeling of being in a Japanese garden.
The four-acre garden has three significant sections representing different parts of Japan: coastal hills (Miyazaki Prefecture), farmlands (Osaka Prefecture), and mountain peaks (Nara). More than 500 trees throughout the garden represent various types seen in Japan; some trees were donated by state agencies like the Department of Natural Resources and Washington State University.
What to Do in Kobayashi Park?
There are plenty of things to do here! One nice thing about this park is the tranquility found within its walls. You’ll find most people just sitting or walking along enjoying nature’s peacefulness. For those who want physical activity, there are trails where running is standard among dog walkers, including their four-legged friends being walked off-leash, so be aware if you have an aversion to dogs as many people with them come here daily, it doesn’t cost anything to enter the park. On weekends there is a small food cart operated by donations so you can buy lunch or snacks and eat on one of the benches provided for visitors to rest and enjoy their meal before continuing with whatever activity they choose to engage in at Kobayashi Park.
You can enjoy the fantastic view from one of their scenic lookouts or take a run on its five-mile trail that loops around through the forest and along with Lake Wright as well as many other trails winding among trees and meadows to explore all sorts of nature at Kobayashi Park. It even houses an arena where you can sit under the stars during the summer months, enjoying music concerts provided for free by local community groups. But what most people head out here for is something different than just relaxing with nature or listening to symphonies; they come because it also contains a small oriental garden called Kobayashi Park.
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