On the eighteenth floor of a 1970s Central tower block, an architect and a landscape designer transformed a bare concrete balcony into one of Hong Kong's most carefully considered small gardens.
Hidden in plain sight along Victoria Peak's most famous walking path are the remnants of a century of horticultural ambition — camellias, gardenias, and banyans that have outlived the grand houses they were planted to adorn.
When a Hong Kong architect bought a crumbling walled village house in the New Territories, she found the bones of a 1930s garden beneath decades of overgrowth. What she restored is a masterclass in restraint.
Hong Kong sits at the boundary of temperate and tropical. Its gardens follow a calendar unlike any other — here is what blooms when, and why understanding the seasons is the first step to gardening well here.
