Kubota Garden

Established as a public site in the late 1980s, Kubota Garden was created decades earlier by Fujitaro Kubota and his son, Tom, as an ornamental landscape in south Seattle. The twenty-acre site combines elements of traditional Japanese landscape design with plants that grow naturally in the Pacific Northwest. In the 1970s, the Kubota family offered the property for sale to the city. Although the city declined, the original 4.5-acre Japanese garden (at the core of the twenty-acre site) was designated a Seattle Landmark in 1981. Eventually, Councilwoman Jeanette Williams was able to raise enough funds for the city to purchase the entire property in 1987. Through a partnership with Seattle's Parks and Recreation Department, the Kubota Garden Foundation ensures that the original vision of the Kubota family is preserved in this distinctive public landscape.

Born in 1879, Fujitaro Kubota was raised in Kochi Prefecture on the island of Shikoku, Japan. In 1907, he left his home country for the United States, immigrating to the Pacific Northwest. Self-taught in landscape design, Kubota acquired a five-acre parcel of marshy land in south Seattle in 1927. He began to plan a garden, clearing trees and digging ponds himself to create a landscape that would align with principles of Japanese landscape design, while incorporating native plants that naturally grew in the Pacific Northwest. Upon completing his garden in 1962, a memorial stone was erected to commemorate his accomplishments. Written by the Reverend Fumio Matsui and hand-carved by Mr. Okada of Japan, the stone was inscribed with the words: “It was the eighty-third year of Fujitaro Kubota.”

In 1942, the Fujitaro’s son, Tom, was drafted to serve in the U.S. military, serving in the Pacific during World War II. The Kubota family in Seattle was forced to relocate to Camp Minidoka, a U.S. internment camp that held people of Japanese descent during World War II. After the war ended, the family was able to return to their home in south Seattle, where they purchased additional acreage, expanding the original garden. In the decades after the war, Tom Kubota maintained the site, which had evolved to become a twenty-acre ornamental garden, featuring elements of traditional Japanese landscape design, including decorative stone lanterns, pagodas, ponds, water features, and bridges. Tom strongly favored making the site available to visitors as a public garden, and in the 1970s, the Kubota family approached the city of Seattle to discuss the sale of the garden to the city.

Although the city declined to purchase the property, in 1981 Seattle’s Landmarks Preservation Board designated the original 4.5-acre Japanese garden (designed by Fujitaro in the late 1920s) as a City Landmark, within the family’s larger twenty-acre property. During the late 1980s, real estate developers came forward and attempted, unsuccessfully, to purchase the property for condominiums. Eventually, Seattle Councilwoman Jeanette Williams was able to raise enough money for the city of Seattle to purchase the site in 1987. Two years later, the Kubota Garden Foundation was established to ensure that the Kubota family’s vision for the site would be preserved. Today, the twenty-acre Kubota Garden is a public site maintained through a partnership between the Kubota Garden Foundation and the city of Seattle’s Parks and Recreation Department.

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"Kubota Garden", City of Seattle. Accessed August 29th, 2023. https://www.seattle.gov/parks/allparks/kubota-garden.

"Kubota Gardens", Atlas Obscura. Accessed August 29th, 2023. https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/kubota-gardens.

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"Spirited Stone", Kubota Garden. Accessed August 29th, 2023. https://kubotagarden.org/spiritedstone.html.

"Visit", Kubota Garden. Accessed August 29th, 2023. https://kubotagarden.org/visitbasics.html.