Authentic Chinese garden growing lasting legacy

100 percent bona fide

The initial plan of the Royal Horticultural Society, or RHS, was to create an oriental garden within the Garden Bridgewater.

In May 2018, when Lee Kai Hung met Sue Biggs at a breakfast served at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, a century-old gardening festival held in London, the retired Hong Kong businessman and philanthropist said to then director-general of the RHS: "Look, change the oriental garden to a Chinese garden, and I will raise the finance for you."

Lee, who is 88 this year, has been committed to improving the UK's understanding of China for many years.

His charity, the Lee Kai Hung Foundation, which was established in 1992, has endowed the Manchester China Institute at the University of Manchester, and the Lee Kai Hung Chinese Culture Gallery at the Manchester Museum.

When the deal on the Chinese Streamside Garden was done, a founding and working committee, comprised of prominent members of the Chinese community in Manchester and England's Northwest, was soon established by Lee to raise the first 500,000 pounds ($606,249). Lee himself donated 1.8 million pounds to the RHS in 2020.

"It is the first time that the Chinese community has worked so closely and successfully with a UK mainstream cultural institution," says Gerry Yeung, executive chair of the Chinese Streamside Garden Founding and Working Committee.

The China Flower Association, as the coordination unit on the Chinese side, and the Yangzhou Classical Garden Construction Company, as the contractor, also joined the project to turn the vision for the garden into a reality.

"A genuine Chinese garden has its design philosophy to follow. First, harmony should be achieved between humans and nature by utilizing the existing terrain to create gardens. As the saying goes: 'Though made by man, it appears as if created by heaven,'" says Jiang Zehui, president of the China Flower Association.

Jiang explains that "the so-called nature in a Chinese garden is, in fact, a more humanized one", pointing out that the rocks, the ponds, the plants and the architecture, recognized as the four features of a traditional Chinese garden, are usually not randomly composed but have their symbolic associations, which reveals another layer of the Chinese design philosophy: meanings are beyond what has been expressed.

In the Chinese Streamside Garden, more than 1,000 plants of Chinese origin will be planted to reflect a common theme: a celebration of the four seasons.

An identical space can have different scenery as a result of seasonal changes, while at the same time, some of the gardens are meticulously designed to highlight the splendor of particular seasons, according to Jiang. For example, the "Autumn Fireworks", full of deciduous trees and shrubs, will create a golden panorama in the fall.

The Chinese horticultural experts who took part in the project derived the idea for the garden from Geyuan, a private residential garden in Yangzhou, in East China's Jiangsu province, which is known for its seasonal rock gardens, with four rockery areas, each representing a single season.

Stones of different hues and shapes are piled up to paint a colorful landscape in the garden.

"Mountains in spring are flamboyant, like a bright smile, in summer are verdant, like water drops, in autumn are pure, like a light makeup, and in winter are bleak, like a sleeping old man," Jiang says.

"In the Streamside Garden, the scenery can be described as follows: 'Spring is for blossoming flowers, summer is for seeking shades, autumn is for fall leaves, and winter is for outstretched branches.'"

And the Qing Yin Pavilion, enveloped by the wavering shadow of green trees, is not merely a place for viewing the scenery, it represents music, one of the four artistic talents that are considered to be essential for ancient Chinese scholars to master.

"The construction of the pavilion is intended for visitors to understand the historical connection between nature and self-development of Chinese literati," say the artisans from the Yangzhou Classical Garden Construction Company.

"For centuries, the natural world has long been conceived by Chinese scholars as a place for self-cultivation. Men escape to mountains to purify their spirit and find renewal, with a series of poems, songs and paintings being created to reflect the viewers' mental world. And the garden, as a miniaturized landscape, is superb for scholars to concentrate on arts."

Three additional pavilions are set to follow around October 2025, representing chess, calligraphy and painting, the three remaining artistic talents. The four interlinked pavilions will eventually form the Yangzhou Scholar's Garden, the beating heart of the Chinese Streamside Garden.

"It is the first time ever that a Chinese design, Chinese manufacturers, Chinese craftsmen, came to the UK and made a genuine classic garden," says Yeung.