Ge Garden is mainly made up of bamboos and rockeries, and features its separated mountains and piled rockeries. Among all the most famous rockeries is the Four Seasons Rockery. On the Spring Rockery, the sun stone is ragged, and the slim bamboos cast the shadows; on the Summer Rockery, Taihu stone is slim and wrinkled on the surface, and pervious to light. It is hollow inside and grotesque outside. On the Autumn Rockery, the Yellow Stone and the red maple leaves are beautiful and near to the clouds; on the Winter Rockery, the Xuan Stone is still covered with unmelted snow.
As the important units of cultural relics under the national-level protection, the national AAAA scenic spot, and one of the top four famous gardens in China, Ge Garden is built on the basis of the Shouzhi Garden of the Ming dynasty by Huang Zhijun, the head of Salt Ministry in the Huai River Area during the reign of Emperor Jiaqing in the Qing Dynasty. It is named as Ge Garden because its owner loved bamboos, and therefore used the artistic description in the poem by Yuan Mei of the Qing dynasty: "Under the moonlight, the bamboos' shadow forms the shape of thousands of Chinese character Ge". |
