Abstract: “Palace” was the core of ancient capital cities, while “garden” was an artificial creation of nature. Exploring their spatial relationship is important for the studies of the spatial organizations of ancient cities and towns. Following the time line, this research sorts out the overall spatial relationship between “palace” and “garden” through the combination of pictures and texts, combined with archaeological materials and historical documents, and analyzes the characteristics and causes of the changes between them. It puts forward that the spatial relationship between “palace” and “garden” has experienced four stages of changes. 1) During the Qin and Han Dynasties, the “outer imperial gardens” surrounded the imperial palace, and the “nearby imperial gardens” were separated from the imperial palace. 2) During the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, the “imperial gardens” were independent from the imperial palace, and basically formed the paradigm with “palace in the front, garden in the rear”. 3) In the Sui and Tang Dynasties, there formed the spatial integration relationship at multiple levels between palace buildings and “imperial gardens”, imperial palace and “nearby imperial gardens”, and imperial palace and “outer imperial gardens”. 4) During the Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties, the “outer imperial gardens” were far away from the imperial palace and vanished. Instead, the imperial palace was surrounded by the “nearby imperial gardens”. The “imperial gardens” were also gradually narrowed. The “nearby imperial gardens” and “imperial gardens” had closer ties to the city axis. On the whole, the changes of spatial patterns tended to extend from the huge to the small, from the outside to the inside, and from the simple and sketch to the exquisite. They were mainly due to the comprehensive influences of functional requirements, capital morphology and ritual system.