Senganen Garden (仙巌園)

Senganen Garden (仙巌園) is a Japanese style landscape garden along the coast north of downtown Kagoshima. One of the garden's most striking feature is its use of Sakurajima and Kagoshima Bay as borrowed scenery. The garden also includes small ponds, streams, shrines and a bamboo grove.

At the center of the garden stands the Iso Residence. The residence was originally built in 1658 along with the rest of the garden, but the current building mostly dates back to a reconstruction of the mid 1880s. After the end of the feudal age, the Iso Residence became the main residence of the Shimazu family, and its rooms are preserved in the way they were used in the 1890s. The interior of the residence can only be seen on a paid tour that includes tea and a snack at the end.

Senganen has a variety of trees and plants that make the garden scenery interesting in all four seasons. There are a number of cherry trees, especially of the early flowering kanhizakura variety, which open as early as late January. Other cherry tree varieties provide flowers through mid April.