This strolling-type garden centered around a pond utilizes the natural terrain of the Musashino plateau by incorporating the valleys found in the terrace cliffs into the design of the gardens. The highlight is the strikingly different types of landscaping used to design the various areas. In example, on top of the cliff, a colorful lawn can be found, and at the bottom is a welling lake and forests. The gardens were formerly maintained as part of a holiday house for the former Manchurian Railway vice-president Teijo Eguchi from 1913 to 1915. In 1929, it was purchased to be the villa of the Iwasaki Family of the Mitsubishi Zaibatsu. In the mid-1960s local groups began lobbying to protect the gardens from the era's development programs, and in 1974, the area was bought by the City of Tokyo who opened it as an admission charging park. The gardens were named for the Kokubunji Village Tonogayato area on which they were originally built. In 1998, the Tonogayato Gardens were designated as a Cultural Asset (Beautiful Site) by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government.