Chinese Garden to Fulfill Dream of Huntington Library Founder

Every morning for almost a year, Jin Chen walked from his office at the Huntington Library’s botanical center to a swath of weedy land in a remote corner of the library grounds and awaited inspiration.

He would study the pattern of sunlight streaming through the trees, part of his efforts to design one of the world’s largest Chinese gardens. He would marvel at the slant of the oaks, noting how the mature trunks leaned left or right.

On clear days, Chen would crane his neck toward the San Gabriel Mountains and envision how they would look from a bridge or pagoda.

Then he would go back to his basement office and draw.

Those drawings and plans were unveiled last month at a ceremony announcing a $10-million gift to design and build the 3-acre first phase of the garden, which Huntington officials hope eventually will cover 12 acres. It would join 13 other specialty gardens, such as the desert garden and Shakespeare garden, at the San Marino institution’s 207-acre compound.

At first, Chen wasn’t impressed by the garden site, complaining it didn’t evoke China, studded as it was with California oaks. But in time, during his morning walks, he realized the oaks, with their soothing curves and deep green leaves, would enhance the atmosphere he wanted to create.

Most of the oaks will remain and be joined by, among other things, bamboo, Chinese black pines and Chinese willows. Work crews are clearing the site of brush, preparing for excavation of a 1-acre lake.

It won’t be until 2004 that the garden’s first phase will open for visitors. But the finished garden is already clear in Chen’s mind--the lotus flowers blossoming from the depths of the lake, visitors relaxing in the shade of a teahouse.

“This is the perfect setting, according to Chinese garden masters,” said Chen, who studied under distinguished Chinese garden scholar Chen Congzhou in Shanghai. “No urban settings can be seen from the garden, just nature.”

Thanks to the gift from the estate of former Huntington board member Peter Paanakker, a businessman and philanthropist who died in 1999, the garden will fulfill a dream of railroad magnate and library founder Henry E. Huntington. The library and gardens opened in 1928, a year after he died.

Paanakker’s gift will pay for the initial phase of the garden, but the cost and funding for the rest of the project have yet to be determined.

Still, San Marino’s Chinese community leaders are looking forward to having what they call a prominent symbol of their culture in their backyard.

“Chinese gardens make you feel what those a thousand years ago felt, and what they thought,” said Matthew Lin, an orthopedic surgeon and San Marino’s first Chinese American to serve on the City Council. “I think it’s a good place to relax in this busy life of civilization.”

Jim Folsom, director of the botanical gardens, noted that San Marino’s Chinese American population has surged past any other ethnic group in the city over the last 10 years. “This will be the first garden created at the Huntington with the public in mind,” he said. “We’ve never built a garden thinking of cultural celebration.”

For Chen, that culture has guided his design. One evening as he watched a sunset, the sky orange and pink, he said, “I thought that it would be wonderful to put a bridge there to capture the sunset.”

Chen will use lines of poetry to describe 18 scenes in the garden and wrote the words to capture what he saw that day: “Rainbow bridge echoes rosy clouds.”