Cowden Japanese-Style Garden

The Japanese garden at Cowden is located near the town of Dollar in Clackmannanshire, Scotland, on the grounds of the Cowden Castle estate. It was created in 1908 by Scottish traveller Ella Christie, but it was closed to the public in 1955 after an act of extensive vandalism. After undergoing prolonged restoration under the supervision of Professor Masao Fukuhara of the Osaka University of Arts and with involvement of local teams and visiting students, the garden reopened in 2019. The garden is the only one of its type in the world to have been designed by a Japanese woman, horticulturist Taki Handa. It was tended over the years by Japanese gardener Shinzaburo Matsuo and supervised on several occasions by the Hereditary Head of the Soami School of Imperial Garden Design at Nagoya, Jijo Suzuki. The Cowden Garden is now managed by the Cowden Castle SCIO charitable trust.