"[1] The Lion Grove Garden was built in 1342 during the Yuan Dynasty by a Zen Buddhist monk, Wen Tianru, in memory of his teacher Abbot Zhongfeng.

According to a garden record of the Yuan dynasty, there were ten thousand bamboo plants and many eccentric rocks in the Lion Forest.

[3] The name also refers to the Lion Peak of Mount Tianmu in Lin'an City, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, where Abbot Zhongfeng attained nirvana.

In 1917, Shanghai pigment merchant, Bei Runsheng, grandfather of I. M. Pei, purchased the garden and finished the restoration in 1926.

[4] The garden's design attracted the attention of notable visitors, such as the painter Ni Zan, who created the painting Picture Scroll of Lion Grove in 1373.

[5] In addition to the 22 buildings the garden also houses 25 tablets, 71 steles, 5 carved wooden screens, and 13 ancient specimen trees, some dating back to the Yuan Dynasty.

The formal entrance to the western section is called the Eight Diagram Tactics located across the Jade Mirror Bridge from the Pointing at Cypress Hall.

There is a folktale about two immortals, Iron-Crutch Li and Lü Dongbin, who wandered into the maze of the Lion Grove and lost their way, after which they settled in a cave to play chess.

A tablet is inscribed with praise for Ni Zan's Picture Scroll of Lion Grove Garden.

Named for a poem Lin Bu (Song Dynasty), "Dappled shadows hang aslant over clear shallow water; the faint fragrance wafts in the moonlit dust".

It is a flower basket type hall meaning the front two columns are deleted, and replaced by elaborate carvings.

Built during the 1917 renovation this three bay hall with portico divides two courts that house the last remnant of the Yuan Dynasty Garden of Five Pines.

Named for the adjacent grove of prunus mume trees, this pavilion has a tablet with the inscription, "The latticed window frames the spring scene outside".

Named after a verse by Gao Qi (Ming Dynasty), "Instead of greeting his guest, (the host) smiles and points at a cypress before the hall."

Listening to Rain Tower This addition to the Pointing to Cypress Hall was built in 1917 to houses a calligraphy collection of rubbings from the stele embedded in the walls of the Old Five Pines Garden.