Activities that occurred in Chinese classical gardens and American gardens are an important part of their traditional culture. The purpose of this study is to explore the similarities and differences between Chinese classical gardens and American gardens. Six classical Chinese gardens in China and five American gardens in the United States were selected to test. Eighty-five possible activities were selected based on site visits and from historical documents. A method named principal component analysis with plots was applied to this research. After applying the variables into the software SAS, a number of eigenvalues were generated, and the first three eigenvalues representing almost 75% of the variance were used for further analysis. The result shows a distinctive difference between Chinese garden and American garden. The first principal component indicates the major element that differ the Chinese garden and American garden, with activities occurred only in Chinese gardens such as literati gathering, writing calligraphy, and examine antiques; and activities occurred only in American gardens such as barbecuing, making bonfires, and playing ball games. The second and third principal components explained the difference between Chinese gardens, which varies primarily because of the garden owner's lifestyle.
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