Atop Wells Fargo's world HQ in San Francisco is a Japanese garden. The garden has won some awards and is a standard feature in Japanese garden and Japanese culture media. A Japanese garden is an art form that has a far-reaching aesthetic and is much admired—Wikipedia has the most complete info. Wells Fargo has a good one.

Wells Fargo's Japanese garden is a part of the Company's executice facilities and is not accessible to the public.

Basically, Wells Fargo merged with San Francisco's American Trust Company in 1960. The new company finished building a new high-rise that year, and the top floor was dedicated to Board of Directors and social functions. At the time, business with Japan was hot—the country had industrialized rapidly, and the economy grew in spectacular fashion. U.S. business, especially financial, wanted in. Both Wells Fargo and ATC had strong business ties with Japan, and the forecast for the 1960s was bright. To celebrate ties with Asian business—and the future—Wells Fargo chose a Japanese garden to cap its new building.

The Japanese garden is art that creates a landscape in miniature to actualize the harmony in nature. Instead of a nice cluster of plants to simply please the eye, Japanese gardens build small worlds that reflect the seasons, points on the compass, memories of home—whatever the artist wants to create. The effect is like looking over a huge expanse, as from a mountaintop. Every feature of the garden has its own story to tell, a feeling to invoke.

It's really quite a place. You feel like you're all alone in nature, even with a reception buzzing around you. Even with the city all around, only a few feet past the enclosure.

The garden here reflects the various landscapes of Northern California and even has a Gold Rush element—a nod to Wells Fargo's deep California roots. There is an old Japanese Maple tree that stands as the anchor; Japanese gardens always have a venerable old tree. Smaller trees and rock formations look like a view of a distant hill with a river, with a a mini-forest in another direction. Mirror-like windows add depth and distance.

The garden was designed by famed landscape architect George Murata in 1960. A noted landscape artist who studied with Murata, and who has worked on the rooftop garden over the years, told me it is a deft creation, balancing several artistic "messages" with brilliant technique. The equivalent is an impressionist painting.

Murata's garden "is a Renoir," he told me.