Gardens in Mito

What?
Hitachi Seaside Park (ひたち海浜公園) is a huge park of 350ha. Apart from a small amusement park it is home to a variety of plants and flowers and boasts that any time of the year at least something is in bloom. Kairakuen (偕楽園) is quite an atypical Japanese garden, but nonetheless it is regarded as one of the top 3 gardens in Japan. It is particularly famous for its great amount of plum trees.
Where?
Both parks are located in Ibaraki Prefecture (茨城県). While Kairakuen is located in Mito (水戸), the prefectural capital, Hitachi Seaside Park finds its home ate the next door city, Hitachinaka (ひたちなか). Kairakuen can be reached by a 30 minute walk from Mito Station. In the high season when the plum trees are in bloom, the nearby Kairakuen Station opens, but it is served infrequently. Buses are an additional option. Hitachi Seaside Park can be reached with a 30 minute bus ride from Katsuta Station (勝田駅) (platform 2). This station is just a 6 minute train ride from Mito Station, which is relatively easy to reach from Tokyo.
URL
Japan Guide Outline (Hitachi Seaside Park) Japan Guide Outline (Kairakuen)

After 10 days of hard physical workdays of around 12 hours I needed a bit of rest. But as I also didn’t want to let a day during my vacation go to waste, so I decided to visit 2 gardens. Nothing better than a leisurely walk in the park, no?

Well, the weather wasn’t really playing along, which makes up quite a big part of the charm of a garden. That put aside, I also visited the Hitachi Seaside Park at the worst possible moment. The park seemed interesting to me as it’s large enough to spend a few hours and as it prides itself for always having something in bloom. Unfortunately when I visited they were preparing for the event Rock in Japan, making half of the park inaccessible and filled with workers, scooters running around and a lot of noise. It’s only 2 weeks in a whole year, so it can’t be helped, but it was a huge bummer anyway.
Apart from that, the park also didn’t seem that well-kept. For example the dune area was quite overgrown, and even the green Kochia, which are the highlight in full summer, were partly overgrown with weeds. It could be that the park staff was waiting for the festival to end before they gave the whole park a good cleaning though.

But all this made that there wasn’t really much to enjoy. The Kochia’s were still very appealing though, just as was the Narcissus Garden which didn’t boast any flowers, but had a wildly abandoned look with furniture standing with a complete lack of any kind of pattern.

Training back to Mito I also visited Kairakuen in the continuing drizzle. Again I wasn’t really visiting the park at the correct time; Karaikuen is very famous for its plums, but plum season has passed since quite a while. Apart from the plum trees there are also areas for cedar trees, bamboo, walking paths around a pond and a plain “Japanese garden” area. The somewhat famous Kobuntei building should give you a nice view on most of the garden but the weather didn’t allow you to see very far.

Abandoned Narcissus area.

Even so, lots of flowers.

The green kochia.

Very misty weather.

Kairakuen is one of the three most famous gardens in Japan (along with Korakuen in Okayama and Kenrokuen in Kanazawa), but the reason eludes me a little bit. Compared with Kanazawa’s Kenrokuen, Kairakuen doesn’t even come close. The walk around Senba Lake that leads to the park might be a better option in summer and good weather.