Bao's Family Garden, originally the private garden owned by a famous businessman and official, Bao Qiyun, controlling the management of salt trade during the periods of Qianlong and Jiaqin. The garden is the typical ancient botanical garden and also the Chinese private botanical garden, with is unified with the bonsai art in Hui Zhou.
Bao's Family Garden enjoys equal popularity and fame with Humble Administer's Garden, Lingering Garden and Lion Grove in Suzhou, Li Yuan and Plum Garden in Wuxi. The present garden is the restored one, the original garden destroyed in the Taiping Rebellion.
Exhibition of Bonsai
Now after reconstruction, the Bao's Family Garden has become the biggest private botanical garden and the exhibition of bonsai, with a collection of nearly ten thousand of bonsai works. It keeps the representative work of various miniature garden schools from all over the country.
The garden covers an area of 21.73 hectare with nearly 10 thousand bonsai. The styles and shapes of bonsai in Bao's Family Garden are in a great variety. Larger ones symbolize the mountains and rivers, smaller ones are enchanting and graceful, and some others are designed in a way of simplicity. All of the bonsai works give the visitors enjoyment of beauty and fascination.
The whole garden is just like a great museum, in which visitors can fully enjoy the beauty of the real mountains and rivers.