深圳仙湖植物园 - Shenzhen Fairy Lake Botanical Garden

Just a short train ride to the south of Guangzhou is the incredible metropolis of Shenzhen (深圳). This was the first area in China to benefit from the reforms of the late Deng Xiaoping in the late 1970s, and the incredible modern city that has arisen from what was formerly a rural fishing village a mere twenty or so years ago is truly incredible. The city itself lies adjacent to Hong Kong in the extreme south of Guangdong Province and the two cities have recently begun preliminary discussions to eventually merge and become a single megalopolis.



When I arrived at the Shenzhen Fairy Lake Botanical Garden (深圳仙湖植物园) on Thursday morning, I was met by Ms. ZHANG Huafen, a PhD student studying cycad reproduction under the garden's Director, Dr. LI Yong. It was a beautiful day, and was the first garden-visit of nearly the whole trip that was not threatened by rain. Ms. Zhang first led me to meet the director and together they toured me around the vast gardens. Not only consisting of huge collections, including cycad, crepe myrtle, succulent, palm, and penjing, among many others, the gardens were also beautifully laid out and very well-maintained.

Me and Dr. Li standing in front of a specimen of Cycas elonga that is more than a thousand years old!

My favorite areas of the garden were the penjing and cycad collections. Penjing (盆景), the Chinese precursor to the Japanese art of bonsai, literally means potted landscape - as this ancient art-form skillfully recreates scenic and traditional landscapes on the miniature scale. The botanical garden's extensive penjing collection is broken up into several areas, but the majority is housed in a vast network of traditional Chinese pavilions and structures built around a large pond and waterfall.

Some of the penjing and a glimpse of the structures embracing the hill which house many of them

Due to Ms. Zhang's passion for cycads, she was quite thrilled to show me around the botanical garden's cycad collection. In addition to the impressive collections and propagation areas, I was quite amazed by the extensive cycad penjing collection. Not only is the garden doing important conservation work on rare and endangered cycads, the tasteful application of the timeless art of penjing to this unique genus of plants helps to raise its status and that of the collection as well.

One of the many cycads grown as a penjing

The many visitors on the day I visited attested to the fact that the botanical garden not only plays an important role for recreation and relaxation for the city, but also as a large draw for tourism. The visitors were from all over China, but for such an incredibly beautiful garden, I thought it somewhat unusual that I did not see a single foreign visitor during my time in the garden. However, I think that this botanical garden is sure to rise in prestige and renown for foreign visitors as well in the coming years.

Me in front of the Fairy Lake - which lent its name to the garden