Kadoorie Farm and Botanic Garden’s native plant nursery supplies an increasing number of Hong Kong garden designers with locally adapted species. For designer Evelyn Lam, founder of Lam Landscape Studio, this source is central to a practice built around biodiversity and resilience. She creates private gardens and small commercial courtyards that are as tough as they are beautiful, refusing to separate horticulture from the ecology of Hong Kong’s hillsides. In a city where summer brings pounding rain, oppressive humidity and the occasional typhoon, her planting-first approach challenges the default of hard surfaces and imported exotics.
A Designer Shaped by Hong Kong’s Wild Spaces
Lam’s training began long before her formal study at the University of Hong Kong. She grew up exploring Tai Po Kau Nature Reserve and the fung shui woods behind her village home, where she learned to identify the plants that flourish without irrigation. That early immersion now feeds her professional work. Her studio operates from a small base in Kam Tin, giving her direct access to local growers and the native soil she so often tries to mimic. Rather than imposing an exotic ideal, Lam begins every commission by examining what the land is already willing to support. She insists this is not a stylistic choice but a horticultural necessity in the sub-tropical climate.
“A garden that fights its climate is a garden that demands constant rescue. In Hong Kong, the land knows exactly what can survive. We just need to listen.” — Evelyn Lam
Why Native Plants Anchor a Summer Garden
Lam argues that native species are not merely a conservation amenity but the most reliable performers during Hong Kong’s punishing summers. She points out that plants such as Rhodoleia championii, with its glossy, rain-shedding leaves, and the compact tree Michelia figo, whose banana-scented flowers appear in flushes from now until autumn, have evolved to cope with both saturation and rapid drainage. She frequently uses Ardisia crenata as an understorey shrub, its bright red berries persisting through early typhoon season and feeding birds. Unlike many exotic ornamentals, these plants do not collapse under the weight of a monsoon downpour.
Her plant list for a private garden in Clearwater Bay, completed last summer, illustrates the strategy. The backbone includes Ficus subpisocarpa, a native fig that develops a dense, cooling canopy without the destructive root system of the more common Ficus microcarpa. Beneath it, groves of Microsorum punctatum fern cover the ground in deep shade, reducing soil splash and locking moisture. Lam explains that this layered planting effectively buffers the garden against extreme heat by creating a self-regulating microclimate. She also deploys clumps of Alocasia odora in damp corners, where its enormous leaves channel rainwater straight to the roots.
Managing Monsoon Floods and Typhoons with Planting
One of the most common mistakes Lam corrects is the rapid removal of water. Clients often request hard drains and sealed surfaces, believing these will make a garden easier to manage during summer storms. Lam counters this with rain garden techniques that slow the flow. She excavates shallow basins planted with moisture-tolerant species such as Crinum asiaticum, a native lily that handles both temporary flooding and subsequent dry spells. Along the edges, she positions Chlorophytum comosum ‘Vittatum’ (spider plant), which, although not native, has proven extraordinarily effective at stabilising sloping ground with its dense root web.
In larger schemes, she introduces a native groundcover, Lysimachia fortunei, to line swales. Its fine foliage filters silt from stormwater, and when in flower, it attracts a surprising number of small pollinators. Lam notes that this planting reduces erosion and prevents the structural damage that often follows typhoon-force gusts. She is particularly insistent that no rain garden in Hong Kong should use a single obligate wetland plant but rather a palette capable of adapting to a rapid swing between saturated and partially dry soil—a hallmark of the region’s storm-and-drain rhythm.
Shade, Structure, and Seasonal Colour
While resilience takes priority, Lam never compromises on seasonal interest. She sources Bauhinia × blakeana only rarely because its overuse limits biodiversity, preferring instead the lesser-known native orchid tree Bauhinia championii, which offers a more delicate flower display and attract hawk moths after dusk. For summer colour that thrives under a leafy canopy, she turns to the shade-tolerant Curcuma alismatifolia, often called Siam tulip, which produces spikes of pink or white blooms from now until September with surprisingly little care. She plants them in generous drifts beneath Schefflera heptaphylla, a common Hong Kong tree whose hand-shaped foliage provides dappled light.
Lam also integrates structural specimens that hold their form through gales. Podocarpus macrophyllus, the Buddhist pine, is her go-to for vertical accents in tight spaces; its wind-resistant habit and tolerance of container culture make it invaluable for roof terraces and narrow side yards. She advises purchasing larger specimens from Brighten in Sai Kung, where staff can help select trees with well-developed root systems. A 1.5-metre Podocarpus typically costs around HK$800–1,200, and Lam considers it a long-term investment that eliminates the need for staking after the first year.
Sourcing Hong Kong-Tough Plants
Lam refuses to design with plants she cannot source locally, a principle that pushes her clients toward Hong Kong’s specialist nurseries. She regularly collaborates with Kadoorie Farm’s Native Tree Nursery, which propagates species from seed collected in the territory’s wild hillsides. The nursery sells advanced saplings of Itea chinensis and Sapium discolor, both excellent choices for a dense, wildlife-friendly boundary hedge. She also frequents Wah King Garden Arts in Yuen Long for bulk orders of ferns and groundcovers, noting that their Blechnum orientale fronds arrive hardened off and ready for immediate planting.
For smaller quantities and unusual cultivars, Lam recommends the stalls along Flower Market Road in Mong Kok. Stall S8 often stocks Odontonema strictum, a shrub that attracts a steady stream of butterflies with its crimson flower spikes even during the hottest weeks. She cautions gardeners to avoid impulse purchases of non-acclimatised nursery stock that has been grown under mist: “Always check the underside of leaves for whitefly, and don’t be afraid to slip a plant from its pot to inspect root density before buying.” She finds that plants purchased from open-air benches at Kowloon Flower Market adapt far more reliably than those from chilled indoor displays.
A Living Laboratory in Sai Kung
Lam’s most instructive project is a 200-square-metre family garden in Sai Kung completed two monsoon seasons ago. The site had degraded into a compacted clay pan that flooded after every downpour, then cracked into fissures. She removed no soil, instead deep-tilling in compost made from the owner’s kitchen waste, then planted a matrix of native groundcovers interspersed with deep-rooted perennials. Today, Alpinia zerumbet (shell ginger) colonises the back boundary, its pendulous leaf canopies channelling water while blocking the view of neighbouring houses. A dry stream bed of local granite cobble, sourced from Hop Hing Lung Building Materials in Sheung Shui, provides a visual cue for water even when bone-dry and safely conducts runoff to a sump planted with Thalia geniculata.
“That garden cost less to install than the usual deck-and-planter formula, and maintenance is now one hour a week. The real cost saving is never having to replace storm-damaged plants.” — Evelyn Lam
Lam’s design process for the Sai Kung plot began with a full twelve-month observation of sun patterns and water flow, a service she now offers as a Garden Resilience Audit. The audit maps microclimates and identifies existing soil biota, giving homeowners a pragmatic starting point. She says that even a single consultation frequently prevents expensive errors—such as siting a sensitive shade plant in the afternoon blast of a south-west-facing wall—and directs gardeners instead to robust species like Fatsia japonica ‘Spider’s Web’, which tolerates both heat and humidity once established in a sheltered position.
For Lam, Hong Kong’s summer is not a problem to be solved but a design parameter to be harnessed. By refusing to fight the climate, she constructs gardens that look increasingly settled with every storm that passes. Her advice to local gardeners is direct: “Root your planting list in indigenous species, design for water rather than against it, and never underestimate the power of a well-chosen fern to turn a bare soil patch into a cool refuge.” Whether for a compact courtyard in Mid-Levels or a sprawling New Territories village house, her approach consistently delivers spaces that flourish precisely when the Hong Kong summer is at its most intense.
The Garden Resilience Audit, a service offered by Lam Landscape Studio, begins with a site visit to the client’s property in Hong Kong’s New Territories. Over twelve months, Lam records sun angles, shade patterns, and water flow routes through every season, creating a detailed map that reveals the microclimates hidden within even a small plot. She notes soil compaction, drainage rates, and the presence of beneficial fungi or earthworms, then cross-references these observations with a database of local plant performance. The audit costs HK$3,500–5,500 depending on plot size, and Lam insists it saves clients far more by preventing the installation of plants destined to fail in their specific conditions.
During a recent audit in Tai Po, she identified a narrow band of heavy clay that remained saturated for days after rain, yet cracked in dry spells. Her report recommended a raised planting bed amended with coarse sand and leaf mould, planted with Cyperus involucratus (umbrella sedge) in the damp zone and Aglaonema commutatum (Chinese evergreen) on the drier edge. Both species are available at Wah King Garden Arts in Yuen Long, where staff can advise on pot sizes suitable for immediate transplant. Lam also suggested lining the bed with recycled plastic drainage cells from Buck’s Garden Supplies in Fanling, a product that prevents waterlogging without altering the garden’s natural slope.
The audit’s most valuable output is a planting schedule timed to Hong Kong’s erratic rainfall. For a Shek O garden that suffered repeated leaf scorch on exotic ornamentals, Lam recommended replacing them with Hedychium coronarium (white ginger lily) and Costus speciosus (crepe ginger), both of which tolerate high humidity and partial shade. She sourced the rhizomes from Kadoorie Farm’s Native Tree Nursery, which now stocks a limited quantity of these herbaceous perennials. The audit also identified a south-facing wall that radiated heat into the evening, so she specified a trellis planted with Passiflora edulis (passion fruit), a vigorous climber that cools the wall by evapotranspiration and provides edible fruit from late summer.
Lam emphasises that the audit is not a one-off consultation but a living document. Clients receive quarterly updates with adjusted tasks—when to prune, divide, or mulch—based on the previous season’s weather data. She encourages gardeners to keep a simple rain gauge and log weekly notes; these records feed back into her database, refining future recommendations for the same property. For those unable to commit to a full year, she offers a condensed Summer Preparedness Audit (HK$1,800) that focuses on drainage, wind protection, and plant resilience ahead of typhoon season. This shorter version includes a checklist of structural checks, such as securing tree stakes and inspecting gutters, but omits the detailed microclimate mapping that makes the full audit so precise.
