Guozhuang Garden Hangzhou

Plan your Hangzhou tour? Hangzhou is a garden city with a slew of gardens circling the West Lake. Most of the gardens around the lake are free of charge except one garden called “Guozhuang Garden” (郭庄). Guozhuang Garden is the only paid attraction along the West Lake.

Guozhuang Garden (郭庄) is one of the most beautiful private gardens in Hangzhou. Also popularly known as Songzhuang (Song’s Villa), Guozhuang Garden was originally built in 1907 in late Qin Dynasty by a local silk merchant named Song Duanpu. In the Minguo period (Republic of China), Song’s family declined and sold the garden to Guo Shilin from Fengyang. Later the garden was dubbed as Guozhuang (Guo’s Villa).

After revamping, the garden was opened to the public in 1991. Guozhuang Garden is located on the south of the famous garden called “The Lotus Breeze in the Curved Garden”(曲院风荷) along the Yang Gong Causeway and on the west of the West Inner West Lake (西里西湖). It has two gates, namely north gate (abutting the Lotus Breeze in the Curved Garden) and the west gate adjoining the Yang Gong Causeway (杨公堤).

Guozhuang Garden is mainly divided into four parts – the large lake, the small lake, the rockeries and residential area and the West Lake area. Within th garden, two separated lakes in the garden present different views. The bigger lake appears flat and spcious with a slab zigzag bridge and a long corridor. The smaller one is circled by the pavilions and rockeries and residential area.

One whitewashed wall separated a slender area abutting the West Inner West Lake (西里西湖) from the lake and residential area. This slim area is the highlight of the classical gardening in the Guozhuang Garden.

It borrows the larger scene from the Su Causeway and the Northern Hill of the West Lake, a unqiue gardening feature in the Chinese clasical gardening. Guozhuang Garden takes an area of about 10,000 square meters with 3,000 suare meters on the surface. Guozhuang Garden is often cited as the most beautiful classical garden along the West Lake.

If you are going to visit Hangzhou, don’t miss your trip to Guozhuang Garden. Then how to get there? You may take the tourist bus no.1 or 2 and get off at the stop of Huanpu (花圃) and walk there. You may also add it to your circular walk along the West Lake after your stroll along the Lotus Breeze in the Curved Garden.

Entrance fee: RMB 10
Enquiry: 0571 87179617

The big lake area: one slab zigzag bridge crosses the lake with a long corridor passing its west side.