Hidden in Long Beach: A mini Japanese Garden

It was time for me to take a day off and spend some quality me time. Although this quality time was rather short lived, it was indeed much needed. One of the places I chose to visit on my day off was the Earl Burns Miller Japanese Garden located on California State University, Long Beach’s campus.

I must say it’s one of those hidden gems simply because I doubt many people, local or not are aware of this garden.The garden is nice, but small.   Very small  It’s safe to say that one can easily spend 15-30 minutes at the garden and leave.
With the garden being so small, it makes a lot of sense why metered parking by the garden is quite costly.  I believe I paid around $1 (more or less) to park for a total of 30 minutes.  That’s quite steep, don’t you think?

While I was fortunate enough to obtain metered parking, don’t always count on getting metered parking so easily.  If I remember correctly, there are only about four parking stalls allotted for metered parking and one (or more?) of those stalls was for handicapped persons specifically.  As an alternative, one can also pay for a one day parking permit in order to park in one of CSULB’s many stalls.  I don’t recommend this alternative as a one day permit is going to be costly.  Besides, if you’re not visiting the garden to photograph professionally or to attend some event they’re holding, you’re better off using metered parking.

At the garden, I saw couples roaming about. There were also professional photographers on site.  There were artists (or art students, to be more accurate) painting who knows what on the garden’s grounds.  There were also people there simply to enjoy peace found within nature.

Despite it’s small size, the Earl Burns Miller Japanese Garden is nice.  I honestly would have liked and enjoyed the garden a lot more had there been less people on the grounds of the garden.

If you want my honest opinion, the garden isn’t exactly worth driving to from far away.  If you’re interested in visiting a Japanese garden that’s worth driving to, I suggest you to visit Huntington Library’s Japanese Garden.  I’ve yet to pay the garden a visit, but I’ve heard from a personal source of mine that it’s good.  Oh, and if it ends up not being good, there are a bunch of other gardens you can visit while at the Huntington Library.

I only recommend coming to this garden if you happen to be in the Long Beach area.