The rooftop garden at the Kerry Hotel in Hung Hom, with its sculptural layering of Agave attenuata, Philodendron xanadu and a striking Bismarckia nobilis palm, is the work of Joyce Cheung, a designer who has spent over a decade tackling the extreme constraints of Hong Kong’s outdoor spaces.
Cheung runs Terra Verde Design, a studio specialising in small urban gardens, podium landscapes and rooftop oases. In a recent conversation, she shared practical insights drawn from her portfolio of residential clubhouses, hotel terraces and private balconies across the city.
“Every Hong Kong garden is a balancing act between extreme humidity, typhoon winds and the sheer lack of soil depth. You cannot fight these forces—you work with them,” says Cheung.
Working with the Hidden Architecture
For Cheung, the first step in any Hong Kong project is understanding what she calls the “hidden architecture”—the structural limitations that dictate everything from plant choice to watering strategy. Podium gardens almost always have shallow soil beds, often no more than 300 mm deep, and strict weight restrictions. On such sites she replaces standard topsoil with a lightweight engineered blend of coconut coir, expanded clay aggregate and mature compost. The clay pellets—sold as Leca at garden centres like Wing Fung Garden Supply in Mong Kok—create air pockets that prevent root rot during summer saturation while keeping the overall load within structural tolerances.
In these thin profiles, she relies on shallow-rooted ground covers and subshrubs. Trachelospermum asiaticum (small-leaf star jasmine) forms a dense evergreen mat that rarely needs pruning, while Liriope muscari ‘Royal Purple’ adds a flush of late-summer colour without demanding depth. For larger structural plants, she often specifies Podocarpus macrophyllus because its relatively fibrous root ball stays compact even in confined planters. Where a tree is essential, Cheung uses suspended structural soil cells—a system available through specialist contractors such as Greenroof HK—to create a load-bearing matrix that allows root expansion under paving.
“Give a Podocarpus a minimum of 600 mm of soil and it will give you a reliable evergreen screen for fifteen years. Try that with a Ficus and you will be repaving the podium within three seasons,” she notes.
Plants That Earn Their Keep
Cheung’s plant palette is deliberately compact, built around species that deliver structure without constant intervention. Her go-to palm is Rhapis excelsa (Lady Palm), a clumping species that tolerates wind tunnel conditions far better than the single-trunk palms often specified in resort landscapes. For sun-baked roof terraces, she turns to Zoysia tenuifolia (No-Mow Grass), a slow-spreading, drought-tolerant ground cover that creates a textured carpet without the weekly cutting that common turf demands. This species is available as plugs from Shing Mui Garden Centre in Sheung Shui, where Cheung also sources mature Gordonia axillaris (Fried Egg Tree), a native evergreen that flowers prolifically in late summer.
Colour in a subtropical design, she argues, should come from foliage rather than fleeting blooms. Hemigraphis alternata (Purple Waffle Plant) provides deep aubergine undersides in semi-shade; Costus woodsonii (Red Button Ginger) brings a bright waxy inflorescence that persists for weeks. For vertical accents, she often uses Bougainvillea spectabilis trained on stainless steel cables, a detail she recommends securing from Dah Chong Hong Hardware in Wan Chai. “Bougainvillea wants to be starved and strapped down,” Cheung says. “Over-water it or over-feed it and you will have a mass of leaves and zero flowers. Grown hard, it performs all summer.”
The Illusion of Space on a Typical Terrace
Hong Kong’s outdoor footprints are famously compact, but Cheung maintains that a 50-square-metre terrace can feel generous if the sightlines are managed. Her first tactic is diagonal paving: laying 600 mm square vitrified tiles at a 45-degree angle to the building’s axis pushes the eye toward the corners, amplifying the perceived width. She then places a single multi-stemmed Syzygium australe (Bush Cherry) as a central focal point, pruning the lower branches to raise the canopy. This creates a sense of a “ceiling” without blocking light, encouraging the gaze to sweep around the trunk.
Container choice plays a hidden role. Cheung favours deep, narrow planters—at least 800 mm tall—for specimen plants such as Ficus microcarpa ‘Green Island’. The increased depth encourages roots to travel downward rather than circling, reducing the need for frequent repotting. She often sources custom fibreclay planters with a metallic gunmetal finish from Dongguan Green Art, a supplier whose products are distributed through Hop Shing Garden Pottery on Lockhart Road. To reduce watering labour, she insists on fitting these containers with KISSS sub-surface capillary irrigation mats, which are stocked by Aquaponics Hong Kong in Kwun Tong and can cut water use by half during the hottest months.
After the Storm: Designing for Typhoon Recovery
Cheung treats typhoon season not as a crisis but as a design parameter. “I design gardens with the expectation that a Category 8 typhoon will rearrange things,” she explains. At the first client meeting, she proposes a ‘flexible core’: a cluster of unmissable plants that are physically staked and strapped with Rattan garden ties, which are strong enough to hold during gusts but slowly biodegrade so they never girdle a stem. Surrounding this core are looser, replaceable layers—seasonal pots of Kalanchoe blossfeldiana or Impatiens walleriana—that can be replaced without disrupting the design.
Plant selection for wind resilience is a science in itself. Palms with deeply divided fronds, such as Licuala grandis (Ruffled Fan Palm), allow wind to pass through rather than catching it like a sail. Cassia fistula (Golden Shower Tree), by contrast, has brittle wood and typically loses major limbs. Cheung directs clients to Chong Hing Landscaping in Yuen Long for post-typhoon replacement stock, and she keeps a standing order there for Rhapis excelsa and Pandanus utilis, both of which have an uncanny ability to upright themselves after being flattened. As a rule, she avoids large-leaved aroids on exposed sites; the leaves of Alocasia macrorrhizos (Giant Taro) shred so badly in wind tunnels that they look ragged for months.
From Brief to Planting: A Designer’s Process
Cheung’s workflow begins with a site analysis that goes beyond a standard survey. She measures light intensity using a lux meter phone app at three different times of day, maps micro-wind patterns caused by adjacent towers, and notes all sightlines into the space from other units—an essential step for designing privacy. “In Hong Kong, the garden always has an audience,” she says. “You design for the people inside looking out as much as for the person standing in it.”
Once the ‘bone structure’ is plotted—typically a ring of Podocarpus macrophyllus or Rhapis excelsa around the perimeter—she layers in what she calls the mid-storey punctuation: Aglaonema commutatum for its silver-patterned leaves in shade, Dianella tasmanica (Flax Lily) for strappy texture, and Radermachera hainanensis (Hainan Tree Jasmine) for its small, fragrant summer flowers. Seasonal ground covers like Torenia fournieri (Wishbone Flower) are added as temporary colour accents that can be swapped out every four months. Cheung then writes a precise maintenance schedule, which she recommends handing to a professional team such as Green Earth Gardeners in Kowloon Bay. The schedule includes fortnightly deadheading of Hydrangea macrophylla, monthly application of a balanced controlled-release fertiliser such as Osmocote Exact, and quarterly washing of foliage with a dilute solution of horticultural soap to remove traffic dust—a ubiquitous Hong Kong problem.
Where to Begin: Advice for Hong Kong Gardeners
For garden owners tackling a redesign without a professional designer, Cheung’s starting point is unequivocal: improve the growing medium first. “Hong Kong’s native soil is often acidic, heavy clay that bakes rock-hard in summer. On podiums, you have a blank slate—use it.” She recommends blending two parts mature mushroom compost (bagged and sold at the Tai Po Agricultural and Horticultural Society’s garden centre) with one part pumice and one part existing soil. The pumice—available at the same centre—opens the structure far better than perlite, which tends to float to the surface under heavy rain.
She steers beginners toward healthy starter plants from the Prince Edward Flower Market, singling out Brighten Flower Shop for its wide selection of Chlorophytum comosum (Spider Plant), Sansevieria trifasciata (Snake Plant) and Epipremnum aureum (Money Plant)—all forgiving species that build confidence. For larger specimen plants, she suggests Wai King Garden Centre in Sai Kung, known for its mature palms and cycads. Finally, she offers a design mantra drawn from years of working in tight spaces:
“Less variety, more repetition. A garden looks designed when you use swathes of five or six species rather than a collection of fifty. Let the architecture of the plants do the work, and your Hong Kong garden will feel like a coherent room, not a plant zoo.”
One of the most subtle yet transformative techniques Cheung applies—often overlooked in standard garden design—is the strategic use of negative space to create visual breathing room in Hong Kong’s notoriously tight podiums. While many designers succumb to the temptation of packing every centimetre with foliage, Cheung deliberately leaves gaps: bare areas of polished black pebble, exposed aggregate paving, or even a single sculptural specimen placed in isolation. “The eye needs rest points,” she explains. “A garden without negative space is a jungle, not a room.”
She cites the podium garden at Victoria Dockside in Tsim Sha Tsui as a case in point. There, a 4-square-metre area of river-washed grey stones—sourced from Hua Mei Stone Company in Shek O—surrounds a single Cycas revoluta (Sago Palm). The stark contrast between the stone’s clean lines and the cycad’s primitive fronds creates a focal point that draws the eye without competition. Cheung insists that such deliberate voids are particularly effective in Hong Kong, where high-rise overlooks mean every square metre is subject to multiple perspectives. “In a 50-square-metre terrace, I would rather have 20 square metres of active planting and 30 square metres of considered emptiness than try to cram in planting everywhere. The emptiness becomes the design.”
This principle extends to her container placement. Rather than clustering pots uniformly, she spaces them with precise intervals—often 600 mm between each—so that each plant reads as an individual object. At the Kerry Hotel, for example, she placed a line of Rhapis excelsa in tiered gunmetal planters with 800 mm gaps, allowing guests to see the harbour through the fronds. “If you pack pots together, you lose the architecture of the space,” she notes. “The gaps are where the view lives.” For clients hesitant to leave open spaces, Cheung suggests using low ground covers like Dymondia margaretae (Silver Carpet) in the gaps—a flat, silver-green mat that fills the area without competing for visual attention. This species is available as plugs from Shing Mui Garden Centre and thrives in the same free-draining conditions required by her structural plants.
