The garden relocation will be a massive undertaking, as staff plan to move the granite pagoda and stone sculptures and transplant some plants.
OLYMPIA, Wash. — The city of Olympia will soon close and relocate its Japanese garden, which has been at the Justice Center site for 35 years.
The Yashiro Japanese Garden will close June 1.
Last year, the city sold the Justice Center property to the Squaxin Island Tribe. The building is aging and failing, and the city said it would have needed to pay tens of millions of dollars to renovate, relocate or rebuild a new justice center.
The tribe agreed to pay $8.2 million for the 10.7-acre campus and plans to build a hotel at the site.
Relocating the Japanese garden to a new site will be a massive undertaking. Crews will remove and store the granite pagoda and stone sculptures, many of which were a gift from Olympia’s sister city, Kato, Japan.
Olympia Parks, Arts & Recreation staff are determining which plants would be good candidates to be transplanted. The koi will be donated to the Thurston County Correctional Facility, which has a koi pond.
“We’re going to move as many plants as we can,” said Laura Keehan, director of parks planning and maintenance with the city of Olympia. “We’re taking cuttings of plants and trees, and there will be a nice continuation between this garden and this space and whatever new location.”
All park elements must be removed by the end of the year.
The city hasn’t selected a site for the new garden yet. It expects to request qualifications for a landscape design later this year and will then go through public engagement to select a site and design elements.
The city earmarked $350,000 from the sale of the Justice Center site to fund garden planning, design and preservation work.
The new garden is expected to open in about 1.5 years, according to the city.
Olympia’s Japanese garden was originally built to honor the relationship with its sister city in Japan, which was then Yashiro. Kato was formed in 2005 when Yashiro merged with neighboring cities.
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