Shanghai originated from the south bank of the Wusong River and got its name from Shanghai Pu, a tributary of the Wusong River. The image of Shanghai’s gardens is closely linked to the natural scenery of the rivers, lakes, peaks, and swamps. At the end of the Qing Dynasty, Shanghai was opened as a port. Although the gardens in the urban areas were mixed with exotic gardening features, the hinterland of Shanghai is still a vast area of farmland and natural village texture. Therefore, the scenes of the gardens scattered around Shanghai County have the mood of living by the river. This research is based on a large geographic environment and attempts to explore the historical changes of these gardens from the relationship between gardens and the water network in a larger geographical context so as to excavate the characteristic causes of Shanghai private gardens originating from Jiangnan and forming their own Shanghai style from the regional characteristics of gardens. It argues that the characteristics of Shanghai’s riverside gardens reflect the deep infiltration of the regional features on the people and things growing in the area, which became an internalized and conscious aesthetic consciousness of the garden makers. In modern Shanghai, where the East meets the West, it is these local practices based on regional characteristics that became the internal motivation for the change of private gardens, with their integration of exotic elements that would eventually be localized into the unique modern private gardens in Shanghai.