IN THE GARDEN: HONG KONG BOASTS BOTANICAL GEM
Vigorous and impressive: Hong Kong’s Nan Lian Garden is a classical treasure of constantly changing natural beauty
When I went to Hong Kong for the first time this spring, friends told me I would have a hard time finding exciting gardens.
I was delighted and surprised, therefore, to find a truly outstanding world- class garden in Kowloon.
The Nan Lian Garden in the Diamond Hill district was built in the traditional Tang dynasty style as part of the Chi Lin Nunnery.
The garden took four years to build and was completed in 2006. It is a gem of tranquillity and beauty in the heart of a densely populated urban area. It is certainly the best Chinese garden I have ever visited.
Half- moon- shaped and covering 35,000 square metres ( 3.5 hectares), it contains more than 60 different species of plants, including a large number of sculptured Buddhist pines ( Podocarpus macrophyllus) as well as a grove of banyan trees and all sorts of unusual specimens, such as the humped fig tree, silk cotton tree, mountain fig and silverback artocarpus, sometimes called the Hong Kong breadfruit.
The aim from the start was to create, in a limited space, a landscape garden with natural scenes in miniature.
Many tourists stumble upon the garden quite by accident when they visit the Diamond Hill shopping mall. That’s where I started out when I went looking for it.
And what a contrast it was to first walk in the hustle and bustle and noise and bright lights of the mall and then to step across the road and enter this magnificent garden of peace and quiet and transcendent beauty. The sounds of the city fall away and you are immediately immersed in a garden full of surprises at every turn.
I started out at the Black Lintel Gate and was aware right away of the quality, care and planning that had gone into the garden. The pines were immaculately pruned and shaped, and radiated healthiness.
The stroll path took me past a gallery of exquisite Chinese timber architecture and alongside a beautiful rockery to one of the highlights of the garden: the gold octagonal Pavilion of Absolute Perfection, positioned on an island in the centre of a lotus pond. Two red Zi Wu bridges on the north and south side connect the pavilion.
I paused to see the grove of banyan trees and the path of pines before pressing on to see the larger of the garden’s two ponds — the Blue Pond with its elegant Lunar Reflection Terrace, from where you see beautiful koi flashing through the water during the day and the moon mirrored at night.
Every inch of the garden is immaculately maintained. And I was amused — and impressed — by some of the posted rules for visitors, such as “no brawling or bawling, no frolicking or running, no hawking or touting, no wearing of wedding or graduation gowns and no eating and drinking in the garden, except watering and feeding of babies.”
From the Blue Pond, I turned a corner to find a lovely waterfall. This is where natural spring water tumbles into the garden and flows west to east to fill the two ponds.
The garden has numerous quality traditional wooden buildings, including a classic Chinese pagoda, a hexagonal Tang- style Wisdom Pavilion and a mill with a water wheel.
A grand stone staircase further on leads up into the Chi Lin Nunnery, where I was amazed to find in the courtyard not only four beautiful formal lotus ponds but a superb display of penjing — plants skilfully groomed in trays to create landscape art, sometimes called tray scenery.
It was a pleasure to stand and watch gardeners in their blue work clothes tenderly and thoughtfully clipping these living masterpieces created using Indian laurel fig, Buddhist pine, Chinese banyan, orange jasmine and more common plants like Thuja orientalis, pyracantha and Chinese boxwood.
My time in the Nan Lian Garden has whetted my appetite for more Chinese gardens and for a deeper and closer look at the culture that produced such superb concepts of beauty.
In April, I plan to visit China again to see more of its top gardens, especially in Suzhou, the so- called Venice of the East, where I will be going into the Ming dynasty Lingering Garden and the 16th century Garden of the Humble Administrator, two of the finest and most important gardens in China.
Like Kyoto in Japan, Suzhou is teeming with first- class world- heritage gardens.
Others I have my eye on include the Garden of the Master of the Fishing Nets, also in Suzhou, and the 400- year- old Garden of Contentment in Shanghai.
Of course, I couldn’t visit China without walking on the Great Wall or visiting the Forbidden City or seeing the Terracotta Army, but I also want to take in the peony festival in Luoyang and see Guilin’s ethereal landscape of mountains and lakes.
At the heart of Chinese gardens is an acute awareness of nature and our need to achieve a natural, peaceful and successful interaction with it. This evocation of respect and humility is profoundly moving.
At the Kowloon garden, the designers tried to also incorporate an ambience of poetry and painting into the natural beauty of the plants, rocks and water features.
The goal was to make a garden that manifests the classical style, displaying vitality and ever- changing beauty.
I think they achieved that in spades. I am looking forward to seeing more of the same in spring.