Gardens have long served not only as physical spaces but also as living expressions of humanity’s desire to find harmony between nature and culture. They are places where people nurture not only plants but also ideas, emotions, and relationships. Across time and continents, gardens reflect our search for beauty, meaning, and belonging — a testament to the enduring relationship between humanity and the natural world.

“Rejoicing in Woods and Springs: A Journey Through Garden Cultures in China and the Wider World,” held at the Meridian Gate of the Forbidden City from April 1 to June 29, explores how people across cultures and centuries have imagined, designed, and inhabited gardens as spaces of nature, reflection, and recreation. Rather than focusing solely on gardens as physical sites, the exhibition, which I helped curate, centers on the activities, ideas, and emotions cultivated within them.

Beneath the shared rituals and activities of garden life lie profoundly different worldviews: the mountain-and-water spirit that animates Chinese gardens, the vision of paradise at the heart of Islamic gardens, the humanist order of the Italian Renaissance, and the geometry of the French classical tradition.

For instance, while the mountain motif serves as a foundational element in both classical Chinese gardens and the terraced gardens of Renaissance Italy, a stroll through each would reveal very different connotations and design philosophies. In Chinese culture, mountains evoke celestial realms and the land of immortals. Paired with water, they are said to settle the heart, nourish the spirit, and cultivate the mind. Because replicating natural mountains at scale was impractical, Chinese gardeners used rockeries and ornamental stones as poetic symbols of nature’s grandeur. As an old saying goes, “A single peak reflects the grandeur of the highest mountains; a scoop of water captures the vastness of rivers and lakes.”

By contrast, Italian terraced gardens, such as the 16th-century Villa d’Este outside of Rome, were constructed by nobles and cardinals as grand stages for leisure and entertainment. Their magnificent water features, artificial grottoes mimicking natural caves, and numerous garden sculptures symbolized humanity’s artistic mastery of the natural world. While Chinese gardens served as retreats for scholar-officials’ moral cultivation and deep connection with nature, Italian terraced gardens manifested aesthetics, wealth, political authority, and social prestige.

It’s not all different, of course. For both Chinese literati and Impressionist painters, appreciating and painting flowers was part of daily life. They imbued blossoms with ideals of moral integrity, projected their reflections on life into garden spaces, and captured these visions in words and canvases — leaving behind a rich legacy of art.

The exhibit’s east gallery space opens with an imagined dialogue between portraits of Emperor Qianlong and Claude Monet. From there, a zigzagging exhibition design mirrors a garden path where nature and art intertwine, inviting visitors on a poetic journey across time, geography, and culture as they wander among “Ice-like Purity and Silk-like Delicacy” by the Song dynasty (1127–1279) artist Ma Lin, “Lotus in Ink and Wash” by the Qing dynasty (1644–1911) artist Shi Tao, and Monet’s luminous “Water Lilies.”

Some gardens epitomize humanity’s highest artistic achievements. Emperor Qianlong (1711–1799) of the Qing, known for his passion for arts and collecting antiquities, established an extensive imperial collection system. Early in his reign, he built the Garden of the Palace of Established Happiness to house his treasured collections. The Four Beauties Collection Chamber, a small but richly adorned room within the Garden’s Pavilion of Tranquil Ease, stores four prized paintings: “Admonitions of the Instructress to the Court Ladies” by Gu Kaizhi from the Jin dynasty (265–420), and three works attributed to Song dynasty (960–1279) artist Li Gonglin. This private space of paintings and antiquities served as Qianlong’s personal museum, and it has been meticulously reconstructed for the exhibition based on archival research.

Across the globe in 18th-century Rome, Giovanni Paolo Panini, one of the city’s most celebrated painters of veduta, or large-scale landscapes, was blending reality with imagination to create fantastical collection spaces. In dialogue with Qianlong’s collection, this section features Panini’s “Architectural Capriccio With Figures and Antiquities” (on loan from the Metropolitan Museum of Art) and “Roma Antica” (a watercolor after Panini, from the Art Institute of Chicago), which combines Rome’s famous monuments with sculptures from various villa collections, creating an idealized artistic gallery and evoking a nostalgic reflection on the city’s glorious past.

Gardens also serve religious and social functions. In temple gardens, monks farmed by day and meditated by night. European medieval monasteries featured cloisters with enclosed cross-shaped gardens where monks tended herbs and flowers, seeking solace through manual labor. And while garden gatherings often bring to mind male socializing, British scholar Edward Hyams has argued that gardening’s earliest practitioners were likely women. To honor this history, the exhibition dedicates a section to women’s garden gatherings, featuring works related to Madame de Pompadour, an iconic figure of the French salon, alongside the “Daguan Garden Scroll” from the National Museum of China, which illustrates scenes of women’s life from the book “Dream of the Red Chamber.” These are presented in conversation with the Mughal-era painting “Princesses Gather at a Fountain” to offer cross-cultural insights into how women have shaped garden life across time and place.

Editor: Wu Haiyun; portrait artist: Wang Zhenhao.

(Header image: Details of the Ming Dynasty painting “Eastern Garden,” by Wen Zhengming. From the collection of the Palace Museum. Courtesy of Zheng Wenyue)