A well-kept Hong Kong secret: the guerilla gardeners who tend its morning walkers’ gardens

Apart from concrete and stone pathways, there are few man-made structures in Hong Kong’s country parks. Some public facilities have been introduced, such as shelters, barbecue areas and campsites. Then there are features that predate the Country Parks Ordinance – the “morning walkers’ gardens”, tended by so-called guerilla gardeners.

These small, cultivated spaces nurtured in the wilderness sprouted up in the 1960s and early ’70s, coinciding with rapid expansion of the city’s manufacturing economy and population. To escape the urban sprawl, nature lovers sought solace in the wooded hills, taking predawn walks before the workday began. Areas along popular paths were cleared by these morning walkers that became sanctuaries for rest, shelter and like-minded company. The little Edens became a home from home.

Morning walkers’ gardens are easy to spot because they tend to share certain characteristics: a makeshift shelter, maybe simply a tarpaulin propped up with bamboo; mahjong tables and plastic chairs; and a concrete stove, used primarily for boiling spring water for tea. Some have storage areas, fish ponds or concrete benches embedded with colourful, patterned tiles, Chinese inscriptions are painted or carved into slopes. Trees, shrubs and orchids grow in pots hanging from trees.

There may also be a space for practising tai chi or badminton, while some gardeners have erected parallel bars or lugged up cast-off exercise bikes. The original guerilla gardeners are now elderly, but their interest in a healthy lifestyle began long before the fitness fad of recent years emerged.

Although the government enacted the Country Parks Ordinance in 1976 to protect Hong Kong’s countryside from unauthorised occupation and development, many existing morning walkers’ gardens survived. Only those that already been abandoned were quickly demolished.

Today, there are estimated to be about 20 active morning walkers’ gardens scattered throughout Hong Kong’s country parks, which occupy more than 40 per cent of the land mass. They vary in size from as small as 50 square metres to 3,500 square metres.