Oil Painting Of Shinjuku Gyoen in Tokyo Japan by Jeffrey Dale Starr

Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden is a large park with an eminent garden in Shinjuku and Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan. It was originally a residence of the Naito family in the Edo period. Afterwards, it became a garden under the management of the Imperial Household Agency of Japan. It is now a park under the jurisdiction of the national Ministry of the Environment.

The imperial gardens, which were once meant for the royalty, were completed in 1906, and destroyed in 1945, during the later stages of World War II. The jurisdiction over the Imperial Palace Outer Garden and the Kyoto imperial garden was transferred to the Ministry of Health and Welfare (now part of the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare) with Shinjuku Imperial Gardens in 1947.

It was on May 21, 1949 that the gardens became open to the public as "National park Shinjuku Imperial Gardens". It came under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of the Environment in January, 2001 with the official name "Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden".

The gardens have more than 20,000 trees, including approximately 1,500 cherry trees which bloom from late March (Shidare or Weeping Cherry), to early April (Somei or Tokyo Cherry), and on to late April (Kanzan Cherry). Other trees found here include the majestic Himalayan cedars, which soar above the rest of the trees in the park, tulip trees, cypresses, and plane trees, which were first planted in Japan in the Imperial Gardens.

Horticulture work has been going on in the greenhouses in the gardens since 1892. The present greenhouse, built in the 1950s has a stock of over 1,700 tropical and subtropical plant species on permanent display.