The literati or scholar-garden is a walled, miniaturised landscape in which rocks, water, plants, pavilions and framed views are composed to evoke mountains, rivers and poetic ideas within a city plot. The tradition flourished in Song-dynasty Suzhou and reached its height under the Ming, when surviving masterpieces such as the Master of the Nets Garden (from 1141) and the Humble Administrator's Garden (early sixteenth century) were laid out. Conceived as retreats infused with painting, poetry and philosophy, the gardens turned private urban space into a contemplative cosmos. They were codified as a distinct art with its own design grammar of borrowed scenery and winding routes.
The scholar-garden established an enduring East Asian model of designed nature inside the dense city, an early articulation of urban green space as cultivated landscape rather than mere agriculture.