The garden has an origin story rooted in infrastructure, not horticulture. When Hong Kong's MTR rerouted the Tsim Sha Tsui Spur Line as an elevated railway in the early 2000s, the new transit hub required a reorganized ground level. The bus terminal from the nearby Star Ferry Public Transport Interchange was relocated to this area in 2004, and what rose above that tangle of roads and rail was this elevated public deck. Originally called Wing On Plaza Garden — named for the commercial plaza nearby — the site was formally renamed and opened under the Tourism Commission of Hong Kong in 2007, subsequently managed by the Leisure and Cultural Services Department as free public space. The garden was connected via bridge to Middle Road Children's Playground, which was also relocated above the East Tsim Sha Tsui MTR station. It is, in the most literal sense, a garden built on top of something else.

Stand at the railing and the reward is immediate. Because of its position on the southern edge of Tsim Sha Tsui East, the garden commands sweeping views along Victoria Harbour — one of the world's most photographed waterfronts. The Hong Kong skyline on Hong Kong Island stretches to the east; Kwun Tong District and Kowloon Bay open to the northeast; Lei Yue Mun narrows the harbour in the distance. During the Lunar New Year and National Day holidays, the garden fills with visitors watching fireworks burst over the water. The modernist design — water pool, small open-air theater, a dining pavilion, and two elevators down to street level — keeps the architecture unobtrusive, letting the view do its work.

The garden's most cinematic chapter came in 2015, when the Leisure and Cultural Services Department and New World Development jointly sponsored a plan to renovate the Avenue of Stars and the broader Tsim Sha Tsui Promenade. While workers dismantled and rebuilt the famous walkway, the podium garden became the Avenue of Stars' temporary home, rebranded as the Garden of Stars. A 63-metre-long painting strip was installed along its walkways, depicting scenes and characters from celebrated Hong Kong films. Of the original 107 celebrity handprints from the Avenue of Stars, 20 were placed in recreated frames by the November 2015 opening; the remainder were displayed in 2016. The bronze statues and handprints returned to the renovated Avenue of Stars when the refurbishment was completed, leaving the podium garden quieter, and itself again.

There is an irony built into the garden's geography. When the Tung Chung Battery was sited on a clifftop one century before to watch for pirates, and when this garden's predecessors looked west from Kowloon, they faced an open bay and the island of Chek Lap Kok. Today, Chek Lap Kok is no longer a natural island — it was leveled and transformed into Hong Kong International Airport as part of the 1990s Airport Core Programme. The skyline to the west now carries runways rather than open water. The garden itself faces east and south, sparing it this particular view, but it is a reminder that the harbour and coastline Hongkongers see today are substantially the ones their predecessors built, reclaimed acre by acre from the sea.