Hana no Kyukeijo (Large Greenhouse), Kumamoto City Zoological and Botanical Gardens (熊本市動植物園 花の休憩所)

Kumamoto's zoo opened in 1929 on about 9,900 m² east of Suizenji Jojuen garden, according to Japanese Wikipedia; it moved on 1 April 1969 to the shore of Lake Ezu, its present site, as a "waterside zoo". In 1986, Kumamoto's national urban greening fair, "Greenpic '86", made the zoo one of its pavilions; the fair's plant zone was then kept on as a botanical garden, and the whole took the name Zoological and Botanical Gardens in 1991. According to a city slide deck dated 27 August 2018, construction of the Hana no Kyukeijo, the park's greenhouse, was completed the same year, 1991.

The building survived the April 2016 Kumamoto earthquake, but its interior paths were damaged: the park reopened the greenhouse on weekend opening days from 6 January 2018, once repairs were finished. On 1 September 2021 it closed for renovation; the park's blog cited its age, more than thirty years, and announced a reopening in mid-March 2022, linked to the greening fair of the following year. The outings website of the local daily presented the plant zone in June 2022 as renovated for the "Kumamoto Hana Haku" after thirty-five years, with a "subtropical forest" recreated in the large greenhouse. Air-conditioning works followed; an official notice of 4 February 2026 announces their end and the return of the sloths and pigeons to the orchid room.

The City of Kumamoto describes the Hana no Kyukeijo as a two-storey reinforced-concrete building, completed in 1991, with 2,388.77 m² of floor area; it includes spaces for potted flowers, orchids, cacti, the large greenhouse, an exhibition room and a corner devoted to sister cities. The park's blog calls it "the park's greenhouse"; an observation deck gives a view over the whole large flower bed.

In the opening photograph of the official blog, the entrance front is a low rotunda with columns, in front of water jets. Aerial imagery from the Geospatial Information Authority of Japan shows, behind the rotunda, a fan-shaped plan: a circular core from which radiating wings start, their roofs gridded by pale profiles, over about 3,000 m² of footprint according to the OpenStreetMap outline. A photograph of the interior, published on Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0, May 2026), shows these roofs made of transparent panels fixed to a steel frame with perforated girders, above a pool edged with rocks into which a waterfall drops.

The rooms follow one another from the lobby: potted flowers, orchids, cacti and succulents, then the large greenhouse. The park's May 2014 blog cites, in the pot room, a tree begonia; in the orchid room, Phalaenopsis surrounded by ferns and bromeliads (Guzmania, Vriesea, Tillandsia), including the "Spanish moss" in flower (サルオガセモドキ); in the cactus room, the desert rose (Adenium obesum) and a cactus named 黄彩玉. In the large greenhouse, where the tropical trees reach the ceiling, it notes pineapple, coffee, a calathea, Heliconia rostrata and the tree アカサヤネムノキ. In 2018, the city counted 272 species and 2,543 plants.

Since 2022, the large greenhouse has been presented as a "subtropical forest", with a waterfall feeding a rock-edged pool: visitors can see a two-toed sloth, leopard tortoises and Indian star tortoises, as well as a red-breasted crowned pigeon (ムネアカカンムリバト) that the daily says can be seen nowhere else in Japan.

The greenhouse stands at the entrance of the plant zone, on the west gate side, about 200 m from the bus stops "Dōshokubutsuen-nishiguchi" and "Gabuhashi"; the tram stops at Kamizu-kōsaten, about 950 m away. The route runs from the lobby to the potted-flower room, then to the orchids, the cacti and the large greenhouse; since the February 2026 notice, the orchid room is reached through the pot room. An observation deck overlooks the flower beds, yellow with rapeseed in spring and pink with cosmos in autumn according to a travel website.

In front of the greenhouse spreads a field of flowers with a clock tower as its centrepiece, according to English Wikipedia. The park touches Lake Ezu, and its south gate opens onto the large Suizenji and Ezu-ko park, home to Suizenji Jojuen garden; the visit can be combined with the animal zone.