Although a popular haunt of joggers and birdwatchers, the Taipei Botanical Garden eludes the must-see lists of most travel guides, despite sitting blocks away from Taiwan’s Presidential Office. I imagine it’s for the best that it remains relatively unknown.

The garden is actually a patchwork of miniature ecosystems: a herbarium, a shrubbery, a greenhouse, a grove, all criss-crossed by a network of paths. Its centerpiece is a massive lotus pond that sits at its northern edge. Although I had a faint conception of lotus ponds, I’ve never witnessed one in real life, and was pretty confused and awe-struck when I came upon it. It’s an obvious favorite among locals, and where most park activity seems to gravitate.

The large pond is flanked by smaller pools at its edges, allowing for a closer appraisal of the lotuses. Although many were still in bloom, you could tell that it was the end of the season as they were starting to brown. There was some kind of long-tailed bird that darted in and out of the brambles at the edge of the pools, but I wasn’t able to catch a shot of it. 

Although the garden sits at the edge of downtown Taipei, the environment remains quite quiet and many come to the shade at the edge of the pools to practice music, mediate, and even paint.

Another key attraction at the other side of the park is a greenhouse, which is known to attract bands of dragonflies.

The best way to describe the rest of the garden is as a “curated forest”. Many of the paths offer extensive shade, making it perfect for morning or evening runs, something completely unattainable elsewhere in central Taipei. Even in Taipei’s other large parks, I would scramble from one piece of shade to next until I eventually gave up and retreated to a subway station or the nearest bubble tea stop. The botanical garden was part of a longer route I had worked out on GoogleMaps, but I quickly disposed of that due to the midsummer sun. 

If you move into the inner paths of the park you will encounter even denser thickets of trees, which you can access via gently elevated walkways, erected to leave the soil undisturbed. These are the truly serene sections of the park, where you may find yourself alone with nature.