Hakone is a popular weekend destination near Tokyo and good to visit all year round. During the winter months the area is loved for the great views of Mount Fuji and its numerous hot springs. A lot of people go there for a weekend to spend a relaxing time in a traditional ryokan (Japanese inn) with great onsen and fine dining. However, it’s always worth a day trip too, especially in summer when all sorts of flowers are blooming. That’s what I did. I bought a one-day ticket, a so-called Hakone Free Pass, which allowed me to use several means of transportation to access some of the most beautiful spots around Hakone-Yumoto and Lake Ashi.
The Hakone Botanical Garden of Wetlands (Hakone Shisseikaen or 箱根湿生花園 in Japanese) is located within the Fuji Hakone Izu National Park, just a little bit north of Lake Ashi. It covers an area of about 30,000 square meters, where you can find a great variety of hydrophyte and alpine plants native to Japan, spreading across marsh and grassland. In total the garden shows around 1700 plant varieties, approximately 200 of them are plants you can find in the Japanese marshlands; 1300 plant varieties fall into the alpine plant category.
This is my third time to visit this garden, but it is the first that I visit in May. Thanks to the great variety of plants, I have always found different flowers in full bloom; however, this time I found it particularly beautiful and interesting. I think it is the garden’s best season now, from late May throughout the month of June. There were so many different colors—simply amazing. I saw blue poppy, yellow daylilies, rosa rugosa (Japanese rose), dicentra peregrina, rabbit-ear iris, primula, Japanese primrose and lots of other early summer flowers, plus deciduous trees such as Acer, Cornus and Quercus.
Especially the older generation of Japanese people has a weakness for flowers and botanical gardens in general, so I was not surprised to see that most of the visitors were around my age. However, if you like flowers, this should not put you off; it is a great opportunity to see an amazing variety of species in one visit. Apart from the garden itself I just loved the view across the wetlands towards the mountains. I think it is unusual scenery in the Kanto area.
The botanical garden is only open during the warmer months of the year, usually from the end of March until the end of November, and the admission fee is 700 yen for adults.
For more pictures, please have a look at my photo story.
