Objective  The opening of the 13th China (Xuzhou) International Garden Expo is a perfect opportunity to show Xu-Style garden to the public. Xu-Style garden mainly refers to the Chinese traditional garden with Xu cultural connotation in ancient Xuzhou as the most regionally representative garden in China. With distinctive and artistic regional gardening characteristics, Xu-Style garden originated in Qin Dynasty, took shape in the Spring and Autumn period and the Warring States period, flourished in Han Dynasty, developed in Tang Dynasty, and finally stylized in Song Dynasty.

Methods  By reviewing and researching the history and gardening art of Xu-Style garden, this research takes the three significant historical periods of the development of Xu-Style garden, namely the origin period, heyday period and stylization period, as entry points to demonstrate how the design of the Xu-Style Garden (Xuzhou Garden) conveys the artistic gardening characteristics of Xu-Style garden in each of the three periods.

Results  Making full use of the original local topography and geomorphology, the design of the Xu-Style Garden creates a spatial form that complements the surrounding environment and integrates with the surrounding mountains and rivers. By dexterously using Lüliang Pavilion as the background, the design depicts a beautiful natural landscape painting scroll that contains pavilions and mountains. The overall design adopts a three-stage spatial layout, forming three narrative chapters: Terrace City Garden, Han Dynasty Garden and Landscape Poetry Garden. The three chapters have their respective characteristics, and there exists a relationship of progression between them. The first chapter takes the Yunnü River and Liangwang City, source of Xu-Style garden's culture, as the entry point, which adopts the garden construction form of terrace-based garden construction to illustrate that Xu-Style garden originated from the concept of "Terrace City Garden". The second chapter takes the culture of Han Dynasty as the entry point, which adopts the traditional Chinese gardening model of "three mountains in a pool" to display the landscape characteristics of Xu-Style garden and pavilion in Han Dynasty. The third chapter takes the poetry culture of Song Dynasty as the entry point, which shows the natural elegant beauty of Xu-Style garden in Song Dynasty by integrating the rockery piling landscaping with cliff inscriptions. The gardening art of the Xu-Style Garden has distinctive characteristics. The exhibition garden mainly exhibits the overhanging waterside pavilion, the most representative and unique architectural form of Xu-Style garden. As to architectural style, the new Han style as the dominant style, combines the traditional Han-Style architecture with the new technologies and materials for modern architecture to achieve the integration of "modern style" and "Han style". Additionally, the exhibition park presents excellent rockery piling and water management techniques, where water and stones are reasonably arranged and coordinated overall, and local stones are ingeniously adopted to integrate rockery into real mountains. The whole park is connected with water by virtue of the elevation difference of terrain, and water shape is rich and changeable. Plant configuration is quite impressionistic, with the natural landscape in Xuzhou taken as reference, and the freehand brushwork technique adopted to reflect the rustic characteristics. The design of landscape sketches in the exhibition garden is based on the Xu cultural relics with the characteristics refined and processed to form decorative sketches and sculptures of landscape architecture.

Conclusion  Despite the long history and rich cultural heritage, Xu-Style garden is rarely known by people nowadays. The purpose of the Xu-Style Garden is to trace the origin of Xu-Style garden, display its gardening characteristics in different periods, and attract more experts and scholars to participate in the research on Xu-Style garden to bring this regionally representative garden to the attention of more people.