The Brooklyn Botanic Garden are home to a lovely Torii and beautiful pond and Japanese Stone Lantern on their aptly named Japanese Hill and Pond Garden. In fact, Japanesa Hill-and-Pond-Garden is one of the oldest Japanese styled gardens outside of Japan and was in fact the first of such styled gardens to be created in an American public garden.

The garden was designed by Takeo Shiota and is considered a masterpiece with it’s “condensed idealization of nature”. The garden attempts to use its structure, foliage and ornaments (such as the Japanese Stone Lanterns) to create an impression of space much larger than the actual amount of space that the garden sits in. The garden’s features are gradually revealed to the visitor as they stroll along the winding path. Some of the key features are beautifully brought to life with careful pruning and training of pines to make them look windswept, ancient and even wizened.

There is a wonderful Komatsu stone lantern in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden which is three tons and ten feet, gifted to New York by Tokyo in 1980 and is some 350 years old. Then there is a fantastic classically styled Kasuga-shape lantern which is intricately carved with the twelve animals of the Chinese zodiac.