CHINESE HERB GARDEN – NEWS SPRING 2007

Garden Design
The first year on the new site in the Botanic Gardens has been concerned mainly with the hard landscape and the care of the plants moved from the previous smaller site.

The main paths are now built to allow for teaching groups and wheelchair access.

There is no traditional design for a herb garden in China. Most are simply forest areas with clearings. For our overall artistic design, we have drawn heavily from the classical gardens of Suzhou, which are famous for their beauty and tranquillity. The aim of the garden is to be as healing in design as it is in content.

The moon gate has been moved from its previous setting and will be extended to form a traditional Chinese front entrance, in combination with the weathered limestone which was already on the new site. A new covered walkway, which has been called the ‘Schizandra walk', will be covered with varieties of Chinese Schizandra species. The design will give a flavour of the ‘lang' used in classical Chinese gardens.

Plants
A planting plan has been developed for the enlarged outside display and new greenhouse collections. To date this has included 250 species of Chinese herb.

We are pleased to see that most of the plants have moved well from the old site at Bracken Hill. Many of these had become mature and are just starting to show fruit for the first time. The Sichuan pepper bush Zanthoxylem bungeanum (chuan jiao) is one example.

We are fortunate to have a mature Ginko biloba (bai guo) already on the new site and even more fortunate that it is a female and so can bear fruit in the autumn. The seeds of the ginko are rarely seen in the UK, as the female tree is seldom planted owing to the disagreeable odour of their ripe fruit. They are used in China as a medicinal herb to remove phlegm and control cough. You will also see them served in restaurants in China. The cooking helps to reduce their slight toxicity, so do not take too many when fresh.

Greenhouse
The new greenhouse collection has been decided and sourcing has begun for the tropical region. The tropical pool and soil for this area is not yet completed. This shows that the garden is still in the ‘building site' stage of development. Although Sir Peter Crane as director of Kew gardens, did perform a small ‘soft' opening ceremony, the garden is not officially to be finished until July 2007.

Conservation
On the conservation programme, we were invited to attend an international conference on Ethnobotany and Conservation of medicinal plants in China. The conference was held at the Nanjing Botanic Garden in November helped to clarify the latest information and programmes in China. This information will in turn help us to focus our own work in this area. The current conservation programme of the Bristol Chinese Herb Garden at this point in time involves the education of herbal practitioners and sourcing of sustainable herb supply.

Conservation is really too large a subject to be tackled by any one organisation, so it is vital that communication and collaboration is up to date.

Feedback from this conference and our programme will be given in our next Newsletter.

Next Newsletter
The next 2007 newsletter will be coming soon!