What it is
Ro Ho En is a Japanese stroll garden of 3.5 acres on Third Avenue, tucked between Margaret T. Hance Park, the deck park built over Interstate 10, and the back streets of the Roosevelt neighborhood at the north edge of downtown Phoenix. It is the product of the sister-city relationship between Phoenix and Himeji, the castle city in Hyogo Prefecture, which began in 1976. Himeji’s mayor proposed the garden in 1987, the Himeji Gardening and Construction Contractors Association designed it, craftsmen from the city came to build it in stages, and the stone lanterns, water basins and other ornament were gifts from Himeji and its citizens. The tea house and tea garden were finished in November 1996, the relationship’s twentieth anniversary, and the rest of the garden followed.
The name is three characters: Ro, the heron on Himeji’s crest; Ho, the phoenix; En, garden. The garden itself is a loop: a stream fed by a waterfall, a koi pond with more than 300 fish, a dry garden of raked gravel and stone, a tea garden with its gate and stepping stones, and the Musoan tea house where public tea ceremonies are held on a posted schedule.
Why leave Scottsdale for it
Because it is the one place in the Valley designed for stillness, and Scottsdale, for all its spas, does not have one. The Desert Botanical Garden is for understanding the desert; this is for forgetting it for an hour. It also belongs to a story Scottsdale shares: our sister cities note covers how the Valley’s towns collected their partner cities, and Himeji’s gift to Phoenix is the most tangible thing any of those relationships produced.
The practical version
Twenty-five minutes from Old Town. Street parking on Third Avenue or the Hance Park lot. Open Tuesday through Sunday, roughly 9 AM to 6 PM in the cool season and on a split morning-and-evening schedule in summer; closed Mondays. Modest admission. Forty-five minutes to walk, longer to sit. Buy koi food at the gate.
When to go
November through March is the garden’s season: cool mornings, clear light, and the stone and water doing what they were designed to do. A weekday at opening is the empty version. The garden stays open Tuesday through Sunday year-round, with summer on a split schedule, early morning and again from late afternoon into the evening, which is a sensible answer to a climate Himeji’s gardeners had never worked in.
Evenings are the special case. The garden runs First Friday evenings in the warm months, when it stays open after dark with lanterns lit and the pond reflecting them, and an autumn moon-viewing night; both are posted on the events page and both are worth planning a downtown evening around.
What to do
Walk the loop slowly, which is the only instruction. The waterfall is at the top, the koi pond at the bottom, and the bench across the water from the tea house is the place to stop. The dry garden rewards standing still. The tea garden’s roji path and gate are the most carefully made things on the property and most visitors walk past them.
Tea ceremonies are held in the tea house on a posted schedule, usually one or two weekend dates a month in the cool season, for a small group; the garden also offers tea tastings on other dates. Book a few weeks ahead on the site. Our couples weekend note lists a tea ceremony here as the one downtown Phoenix stop on that itinerary.
With kids
An hour’s worth. The koi are the point; a bag of food from the gate buys twenty minutes at the pond. Gravel and stepping stones, so strollers manage but do not glide, and the garden asks for quiet voices.
Around it
Hance Park and the Burton Barr Central Library are two blocks east; Roosevelt Row’s galleries and bars start three blocks east of that; the Heard Museum and the Phoenix Art Museum are a mile north up Central. The garden is the quiet first hour of a downtown day.
The story
Phoenix and Himeji signed their sister-city agreement in November 1976, one of a wave of such pairings that American cities made in the 1970s and that mostly produced plaques. This one produced a garden because Himeji’s mayor, Matsuji Totani, proposed one in 1987 and his city’s landscape contractors’ association took it on as a matter of professional pride. Himeji is a city of gardens as well as of its castle, and the association designed Ro Ho En in Japan, chose the stone, and sent craftsmen to Phoenix to set it, in stages, over the better part of a decade. The lanterns, basins and bridges were gifts, some from the city and some from individual citizens.
The tea house and its garden came first and were completed in November 1996, timed to the relationship’s twentieth anniversary. The stroll garden around them, with the waterfall, the stream and the koi pond, was finished in the years after, and the garden settled into the life it has now, run by a nonprofit with a program of tea ceremonies, seasonal festivals and evening openings. It is also, quietly, one of the more remarkable pieces of landscape engineering in Phoenix: a Japanese water garden that keeps 300 koi alive through a summer the garden’s designers had to be told about.
The Scottsdale connection
Scottsdale’s own gardens are desert ones: the Xeriscape Garden at Chaparral Park teaches residents to plant what the climate allows, and the Preserve leaves it alone. Ro Ho En is the opposite argument, water and shade imported wholesale, and it is worth seeing both in the same week to understand the choice the Valley made. The museums and attractions note lists it among the Phoenix stops close enough to count.
Getting there
From Old Town, Indian School Road west to Third Avenue, then south two and a half miles to Hance Park; or Loop 202 west to Seventh Street, south to Roosevelt, west to Third Avenue. About twenty-five minutes with no traffic. Park on Third Avenue or in the Hance Park lots. The Roosevelt/Central light-rail stop is a long walk east, useful from a downtown hotel but not from Scottsdale; our getting around note explains why.