园林——人类出于对大自然的向往而创造的一种自然趣味的游憩玩赏的环境，是一种审美享受的手段，是被人类征服的大自然的缩写。中国古典园林无论是北方的皇家园林，还是江南、岭南的私人园林，手法不一，形式有别，但意境之美，寓意之深则是它们共同的特点，并以渲染自然风景的特定气氛、产生所谓“意境”为最高准则。 园林意境是依赖最象而存在的，当具体的、有限的、直接的园林景象融汇了游览实用的内容,融汇了诗情画意与理想、哲理的精神内容，它便升华为本质的、无限的、统一的、完美的审美对象，而给人以更为深广的美感享受。在城市坊里隙地以景象空间艺术地再现自然空间的中国园林，有如绘画缩千里江山于尺素，也必须是大自然的概括和典型化。 中国古典园林不仅藉助于具体的景观——山、水、花、木、建筑所构成的各种风景画面来间接传达意境的信息，而且还运用园名、景题、刻石、匾额、对联等文字方式直接通过文学艺术来表达、深化意境的内涵。因此，一旦把文学艺术、书法艺术与园林艺术直接结合起来，园林意境的表现便获得了多样的手法:比喻、象征、寓意、点题等等。游人在园林中所领略的就不仅是眼睛能看到的景观，而且还有不断在头脑中闪现的“景外之景”，不仅满足了感官上的美的享受，还能够获得不断地情思激发和理念联想，即 “象外之旨”。正由于意境涵蕴的如此深广，中国古典园林所达到的高度情景交融的境界，也就远非其他园林体系所能企及了。

Gardening, an environment created for relaxed appreciation of natural interest and beauty because of human being’inclination to the attraction of nature,is a means to enjoy aesthetical surroundings and a miniature to reveal the human's domination of nature as well Charateristic of classic Chinese gardening is its beautiful artistic conception and profound significance, which is fully manifested either in the northern imperial gardens or those private gardens south of the Yangzi River and the Five Ridges in spite of the fact that they are diverse in manipulation and different in craftsmanship.Their dominating artistic criteria are to exaggerate the specific atmosphere of natural landscapes so as to create the so-called artistic conception. Resting on scenery is the artistic conception of gardening, which is enhanced into substantial, limitless.organic and perfect aesthetical object, offering more profound aesthetical enjoyment when the concrete, limited and direct gardening features embody the practical contents for sightseeing and synthesize such idealistic things as quality suggestive of poetry and painting, philosophical revelation, etc.The Chinese gardens built in cities to artistically reflect spacious nature. like paintings of landscapes stretching in an unbroken chain, are also representative and typical of nature Chinese classic gardening resorts not only to specific scenery to convey indirectly their artistical conception, like that composed of mountains, rivers, flowers, trees and buildings, but also to literature to directly express and deepen the meanings of their artistical conception, such as garden names, inscriptions, carved stones, inseribed boards, antithetical couplets. The combination of literature, calligraphy and gardening provides gardening with multiple expression of its artistical conception: metaphor, symbolic. implied meaning and theme-making. Enjoying the beauty of gardens, the visitors get not only some idea of the splendid sights, but also the invisible views that appear constantly in their minds, satisfying both their sense perception and their inspiration and relevant feelings as well. It is just because of its profoundness in artistical conception that Chinese classic gardening reached the point of synthetic mixture of scenery and appreciation, immatchable by any other gardening systems.