Qin and Han dynasties are an important stage of garden development. With the determination of centralized political system, royal gardens appeared, and the types of palaces and gardens influenced the later court gardening. At this time, the culture is still full of primitive nature worship, mountain worship, the emperor's meditation activities, coupled with the immortal thought, nature still maintains a strong sense of mystery in people's hearts. The Confucian theory that a gentleman is superior to virtue guides people to understand the beauty of nature from the perspective of ethics and utility. For the natural landscape of nature, only a low-level conscious aesthetic consciousness is constructed. Therefore, in the early days, the functions of gardens were mainly hunting, communicating with the gods, seeking immortality and producing, and later, with the development of culture, they developed to recreation and appreciation.

In a word, the culture that influenced the gardens in Qin and Han Dynasties mainly included the idea of harmony between man and nature, the idea of virtue of gentlemen and the idea of immortals.