I should think you are all getting pretty fed up by now of the gardens I’m showing you, but I’m very conscious that soon the heat will be turned on and walking purposefully around large parks, rather than just sipping tea in the shade, is going to become rather difficult. So while it was still cool and as Easter weekend coincides this year with the 10 days in which Cherry Blossom is around, we went to have a look at the Ya’an Zhong Lu Park. The park, designed by a French Canadian Company WAA, (Williams, Asselin, Ackaoui) has won awards in both Shanghai and Canada.
Yan’an Zhong Lu
To understand this place, think of Birmingham’s spaghetti junction, combined with London’s Westway, all located halfway down Whitehall and out towards Buckingham Palace. Alongside this expressway that cuts right through the centre of the city are little patches of land that in most cities would have been at best just turfed, at worse just left to fester; but not here in Shanghai. What has been produced is an intriguing garden of interlinked patches, dissected
Mark and Spencer in Times Square
frequently by roads, but hanging together as a designed whole. Paths are made to meander amongst bamboo groves and dense planting that mask both the sight and the sound of the arterial overhead road. This also gives the effect of making the space seem bigger than it actually is.
We started our walk through the park with a quick dash into the second of the two Marks and Spencer’s in the city where we ended up buying Richard a second summer jacket and some hot cross buns (it being Easter Saturday), as we came across it by surprise. We then walked around the square to the most easterly part of the garden where there were cherry trees in bloom.
Other plants complimented the pink blossom, camellias and what I think might be a lonicera:
We liked the use of Belgian sets – we had always though of putting these in our garden but they were very slippery in the drizzle, so perhaps we won’t and later on we came across a path of cemented in shingle which might be a better solution:
Others were out enjoying the cherry blossom:
Something I learned on my post graduate course in Floral Design: one of the reasons why cherry blossom looks so good is that the pink flowers are the complementary colour to the bright green newly emerging leaves. Put these two side by side and each zings. This is because the pink flowers absorb all the light green colours and only emit the pale reds, the bright green leaves absorb all the pinks and emit only the light blues and yellows making light green. So the leaves emit what the flowers absorb and vice versa. This double whammy of reflected light, with no other colours to muddy things is what makes complementary colours sing out in gardens and flower arrangements. It works for other sets of complementary colours; purple and yellow, and orange and blue too.
Mass plantings were used to mask out traffic noise and for dramatic effect:
The use of stems is important both in the french pruning of deciduous trees and the mass planting of bamboo, in this case with beautiful blue-grey stems:
Water was used as both streams and lakes to create different aspects and to break up the space and the lilies will look fantastic in the summer.
As you’ve probably gathered by now, adult play equipment is important. We found two sets in the parks, both being used, as were the park benches:
There was a small amount of carpet bedding in the form of pansies and a plan to show how all the patches of park hung together around the busy road system:
But first and foremost it was cherry blossom viewing weekend so that is what we did:
After we had finished meandering through the strip parks we turned south and went in search of a wine shop, Grace Vineyard. We have already been drinking some pretty decent Chinese made wine, which we can buy in the supermarket, but I’d seen a programme about a female wine entrepreneur and I was interested in seeing if we could taste some of her wine. Now although the programme had been entitled entrepreneur, she wasn’t in my book a true entrepreneur. While being educated in America, Daddy back home had bought a farm in Shanxi province and had planted 15 different varieties of vines and he thought that making good wines from the grapes would be a good project for her to get her teeth into. So it was hardly setting up a business from scratch in my book, but give her her due she did get one of the best viticulturists in from France to advise her on how to make good wine. Some of the wines that they have now produced are beating Burgundian and Bordeaux wines in open competitions. When we found the shop we purchased just one bottle from her range of reasonably priced wines just to see and it fact it was very good, and much better than we had been buying in the supermarket. So we shall be going back at some point to get some more.
By this time it was time to find a good cup of tea, so we headed northeast and ended up at Baker and Spice, back near where we started, passing the crowds on Huaihai Middle Road queuing for their Shanghai dumplings at the end of a busy shopping day. (Richard’s trying to use his phone to scan and then translate the Chinese characters, not with much success. He couldn’t hold the phone steadily enough for it to read them properly.)
Anyway at Baker and Spice we abandoned the idea of tea and went for food and fruit juices instead. I had a pineapple and passion fruit drink, Richard had one based on Avocado, his was a tuna nicoise salad with quails eggs and mine a chicken, mango and avocado salad. Most Chinese expect to eat hot food, no matter which meal. Eating cold food is only slowly coming onto their radar, so I do find that when I’m in a western style place I do end up choosing salad quite a lot. Anyway we finished the salads off with a couple of Danish pastries and headed home.
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