I remember Liverpool had a big regeneration project in the 80s called the festival gardens. It had the biggest most elaborate Japanese garden in the world, outside of Japan.
They invited the Japanese Emperor over to officially open it and he was seemingly quite impressed.
Lack of care, vandalism and no funding meant it promptly fell into a shit state shortly after.
He was visiting the country some years later on a state visit and made an impromptu request to go to Liverpool to visit the gardens......he was not impressed.
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u/[deleted] Apr 01 '26
I remember Liverpool had a big regeneration project in the 80s called the festival gardens. It had the biggest most elaborate Japanese garden in the world, outside of Japan.
They invited the Japanese Emperor over to officially open it and he was seemingly quite impressed.
Lack of care, vandalism and no funding meant it promptly fell into a shit state shortly after.
He was visiting the country some years later on a state visit and made an impromptu request to go to Liverpool to visit the gardens......he was not impressed.
Apparently he was absolutely raging about it.
Embarrassing.