• The Garden Passage connects to the Conservatory and extend out to the Bonsai Pavilion. It fully opens to the Huss Foundation Terrace and Huelsmann Foundation Meditative Garden via a series of sliding glass doors or provides a closed walkway during inclement weather.
• The Bonsai Pavilion is located at the end of the Garden Passage near the Charlotte Partridge Ordway Japanese Garden. This glittering glass box displays Bonsai trees year-round in a climate controlled space. It provides lovely views into the Charlotte Partridge Ordway Japanese Garden and serves as a destination during the winter months.
• Huelsmann Foundation Meditative Garden extends the length of the Bonsai Pavilion and provides an outdoor gallery for displaying Bonsai trees. Many of the trees in the Conservatory’s collection must be held outside during the summer months for their optimal health. The Huelsmann Foundation Meditative Garden provides visitors a serene space and stunning gallery to display the Conservatory’s horticultural works of art.
• A realigned Jo and Gordon Bailey Pine Grove Walk curves through a grove of trees providing visitors a picturesque view around every bend. It leads to a traditional Japanese Garden gate that provides a glimpse of the beauty inside before visitors cross the threshold.
• The Bonsai Pavilion and Huss Foundation Terrace provide opportunities to experience the Japanese Garden year-round. Traditional Japanese gardens are intended to provide a new opportunity to celebrate nature in quiet and subtle ways during all four seasons. Visitors are able to view into the “resting” garden from the comfort of the Bonsai Pavilion or venture out to the garden along the Jo and Gordon Bailey Pine Grove Walk.
• The installation of an ornamental fence around the south perimeter of the garden replaces the former chain link fence that served as the perimeter wall.

Tea Ceremony Info and Registration

The objective of a Japanese tea ceremony is relaxed communion between host and guests. It is based not only on the etiquette of serving tea, but on the precise performance and aesthetics of the centuries-old ritual, the beauty of the utensils, the simplicity of the surroundings, and the social aspects of experiencing the ceremony with others. All of these elements coexist in a harmonious relationship with the ceremony.

The ultimate aim is the attainment of deep satisfaction through silent contemplation and the drinking of tea. An authentic Japanese tea ceremony can last many hours.

Built in the style of a traditional Japanese teahouse, Como’s teahouse is made primarily of materials indigenous to Minnesota, and expresses pure Japanese taste. Its aesthetic intent addresses not a spirit of deficiency but of poverty freedom from external concern and awareness of essential inward values. Equally important is the spirit of tranquility. Together they reveal beauty in imperfection and insufficiency.

For the Japanese people, a teahouse and garden represent a mountain sanctuary within the city. The teahouse and gardens are our mountain sanctuary. Through participation, guests set themselves apart from the cares of the world.

One approaches the teahouse and its gardens by way of a gate, leaving the outside world behind. Only participants of the tea ceremony enter the inner secluded garden. This is not a large landscape scene. Dramatic views or unusually fragrant plants are not included. Simple, natural arrangements of trees and green leafy plants are desirable, as is foliage that makes a sound in the breeze.

Preparation for the Ceremony

Guests experience the details of the garden before entering the tearoom. Carefully placed stepping stones form a short path in the garden. They encourage introspection, bringing attention downward as you prepare to enter the tearoom.

Final preparation involves the washing of hands and touching the mouth at a special small stone basin called a tsukubai, which means ‘to crouch.’ While washing, one crouches on the flat smooth stone or mai ishi, which is one of the many stones placed around the stone basin.

Inside the Teahouse

After meditative preparation, you enter the tearoom by crawling through a small, low entrance, which brings you to an area that is in every way another world. Subdued lighting and the fragrance of incense greet you. The room is free of decoration except for the alcove, or tokanoma, set aside as a place of honor. A simple flower arrangement and a hanging scroll establish a tone of quiet, transient beauty for the gathering.

The Ceremony Host

All the hosts of the tea ceremony volunteer their special skills. At least one certified tea instructor is present with a staff of other volunteers, who have studied tea for many years. The tea ceremony they perform has been taught in Japan from generation to generation by the Urasenke branch of the Sen family. We are most fortunate to have the support of these devoted individuals.

The tea ceremony at the Charlotte Patridge Ordway Japanese Garden lasts 45 minutes, and includes an explanation of the ceremony itself.

The Cost

The cost of a tea ceremony is $40, of which, a $5 donation is being made to Chado Urasenke Tankokai Minnesota Association (Yukimakai) to help in the recruiting and training of new tea students so they may continue their long tradition of presenting the Japanese Tea Ceremony (Chanoyu) to the public at The Charlotte Partridge Ordway Japanese Garden. If you would like more information about opportunities to study and learn about the Chanoyu you can contact Yukimakai at YukimakaiMN@gmail.com. Thank you and we hope you enjoy your experience.

Due to the current health crisis we will not be having Japanese Tea Ceremonies this year. We apologize for any inconvenience.

The third Sunday in August is historically the Obon Festival at Como. Because of the pandemic, we are not having the festival this year, but we will have a small water lantern release beginning at 8pm on August 15th.

With the impact of COVID we have decided to do a more simpler Obon this year.  While we won’t do the full festival, we will do a lantern launch in the Frog Pond and the Charlotte Partridge Ordway Japanese Garden at 8pm on August 15.  This will be free for to attend, and watching the lanterns launch at the Frog Pond will not require a reservation, but if you would like to go into the Japanese Garden to see the lanterns in there, you will need to make  a reservation by clicking HERE.

We will not have any vendors, music, performances, food or other activities for this year – we have scaled back the 2021 event but would like to keep the tradition moving forward and prepare for a full return to normal in 2022. 

Obon is an important Japanese cultural and family holiday, at which ancestral spirits are said to revisit their families for three days. Families pay their respects at grave sites and put out offerings of food and drink on a tray before household altars. They also light lanterns or small fires outside the house to symbolically guide the souls to the home. On the last evening of Obon, lanterns again guide the spirits back to their resting places.

The day will culminate at dusk with the main event—the lantern lighting. Six stone lanterns and floating paper lanterns throughout the Japanese garden pond and the Frog Pond will create a vision of peacefulness and harmony to commemorate the dead.