The concept of the Japanese Tea Garden is a very good one, but unfortunately I can not recommend it to anyone. This is because the day we visited, there was no water in the ponds, no water in the waterfall of in the fountains. The plants seemed a bit dried up as well.

Located in Brackenridge Park near the San Antonio Zoo, the Japanese tea Garden was formed out of an old quary that was used for several of the buildings around San Antonio. The story of this little park reflects some not-so-glorious modern United States history. The original idea for a lily pond in Brackenridge Park grew into the concept of a Japanese Tea Garden.

Between July 1917 and May 1918, Lambert used prison labor to shape the quarry into a complex that included walkways, stone arch bridges, an island and a Japanese pagoda. The garden was termed the lily pond, and local residents donated bulbs to beautify the area. Exotic plants and a lighting system provided by the City. The pagoda was roofed with palm leaves from trees in City parks.

In 1926, at the City's invitation, Kimi Eizo Jingu, a local Japanese-American artist, moved to the garden and opened the Bamboo Room, where light lunches and tea were sold. After Mr. Jingu's death in the late 1930s, his family continued to operate the tea garden until 1942, when they were evicted because of anti-Japanese sentiment during World War II. A Chinese-American family operated the facility until the early 1960s, and it was known as the Chinese Sunken Garden. In 1984, the area was rededicated as the Japanese Tea Garden in a ceremony attended by the Jingu's children and representatives of the Japanese government.

In recognition of the Tea Garden's origin as a rock quarry that played a prominent role in the development of the cement business, as well as its later redevelopment as a garden, the site is designated as a Texas Civil Engineering Landmark, a Registered Texas Historic Landmark, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

We only stayed about twenty minutes and during that time we wandered a bit around through the walkways and over the bridges. The grounds were kept up pretty well with minimal graffiti which is positive since it is a public park with no admittance fee. The most creative graffiti we saw were some names scratched into the long leaves of a type of palm plant.

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