Hong Kong’s Nan Liam Garden
For garden lovers, one of the must-see sites when visiting Hong Kong is the Nan Liam Garden and adjacent Chi Lin Nunnery. The Nan Liam Garden and Chi Lin Nunnery are situated in an urban setting in Kowloon’s Diamond Hill area, with the Lion’s Rock Country Park and other hills visible to the north. The Garden and Nunnery together are ranked as one of Trip Advisor’s top five visitor destinations for travellers to Hong Kong. We felt privileged to tour such an exquisite garden.
The Nan Liam Garden’s Tang-style classical Chinese landscaping serves to showcase and promote traditional Chinese culture. The opening of the garden in 2006 on 3.5 hectares (35,000 square metres) of prime Kowloon real estate was achieved through close cooperation of Chi Lin Nunnery and the Hong Kong Government, with the gardens managed and cared for under the stewardship of the Chi Lin Nunnery. The landscaping style, plant selections, and overall design of the Nan Liam Garden pays tribute to the renowned Jiangshouju Garden in China’s Shanxi Province.
The thoughtful planning and daily care that has gone into this Asian garden is highly evident. The meticulous treatment of small details, revealed to the visitor at every turn, contributes to the sense of tranquility in this serene setting. The visitor moves through a series of delightful scenes and settings along the pathway that encircles and threads its way around and through the Nan Liam Garden.
There are a number of timber structures in Tang Dynasty architectural style that anchor the scenes. Chief among these are the Pavilion of Absolute Perfection at the heart of the garden, with its Zi Bridge and Wu Bridge, and the Chinese Timber Architecture Gallery, which houses wooden models of important timber structures, built without the use of nails.
My husband and I paid our visit to this Hong Kong garden during a December 2014 trip to visit friends John and Nancy D. and John and Charlotte R. On the day we visited the garden, the Pavilion of Absolute Perfection was undergoing maintenance. In the Photo Gallery, you will see a few images of the Pavilion take by John at an earlier date, along with a selection of other photos by John and by my husband Art in addition to my own photos. The Pavilion is scheduled to reopen to the public in January 2015.
The sights and sounds of water in the garden create lovely scenes and vantage points enjoyed from the pathways, terraces, and bridges within the garden. The ponds within the Nan Liam Garden are the Lotus Pond and Blue Pond. Other water features are the Pine Brook, Moon Wash, and the Silver Strand Waterfall that cascades down the side and front of the garden restaurant.
Near the Blue Pond and throughout the gardens are displays of large rocks on various “hillocks,” which are small hills or mounds used to display the Nan Liam Garden’s gorgeous rock collections brought in from China’s Guangxi and Guangdong Provinces. There is also a beautiful rock collection displayed within its own timber structure. I’ve included one image from this display in this posting; others will be featured at a later date in a separate posting.
The Nan Liam Garden is described as incorporating major Chinese landscape gardening styles: jie jing (borrowed scene); tou jing (penetrating scene); yan jing (concealing scene); ge jing (separating scene); and kuo jing (magnifying scene).
Of the various plantings, the sculpted trees and the tree varieties are truly lovely to see. The names of the tree types have a certain magic of their own: Buddhist Pine, Cypress, Black Pine, Orange Jasmine, Chinese Hackberry, and India Laurel Fig.
In Hong Kong in late autumn, the flowers we were able to see in bloom were those that enjoy either the “cooler temperatures” in the 15 to 20 degree Celsius range, or those that like fairly equal amounts of day and night, which is the environment favoured by bougainvillea. The gorgeous and colourful blooms of bougainvillea in magenta, purple, pink, and white intermingled delightfully with the darker colours and textures of the lush sub-tropical greenery in the garden.
The Nan Liam Garden is easily accessible by Hong Kong’s MTR Kwun Tong Line (Exit C2). From the metro train station, it is a few minutes’ walk to arrive at the Garden and Chi Lin Nunnery. The address is 60, Fung Tak Road, Diamond Hill, Kowloon. You will want to reserve several hours or the better part of the day to enjoy both the Nan Liam Garden and the Nunnery.
You may wish to drop in to the souvenir shop, the vegetarian food restaurant, or the Chinese Tea House (also vegetarian) for refreshments.
Here are two of several sites that I used in gathering information on the Nan Laim Garden for this article:
www.hongkongextras.com
www.nanliangarden.org
Copyright Cookie Buxton/NK, AK, JD
Text: NK
Photographs: AK, NK, JD
Photograph location: Nan Liam Garden, Hong Kong (primarily 2014 images, with a few from 2013.)
PHOTO GALLERY
Click on any image to enlarge, then click on the photograph to advance through the Nan Liam Garden photograph series.
