HK Forests

The farm, the formula, and the story so far

In a valley plunging down the northern slopes of Hong Kong's highest peak, Tai Mo Shan, there is a farm. It is no ordinary farm - though yes, there are chickens and ducks and pigs, and orchards with citrus trees. This farm - Kadoorie Farm - is like a grand laboratory, a place where new and better breeds of animals, new crop varieties and improved ways of farming have been developed. And, it is a place for conservation, with rare plants cultivated, and hillsides allowed to run wild, safe from the ravages of mankind.

Visit the farm today, and you will find the valley clothed with vegetation. You can follow the twisting roads that climb through orchards laid out on terraced fields. Or walk through wooded glens, where bamboos and ferns flourish in the shade. Reaching the upper reaches of the valley, you will find a garden dedicated to orchids - some 75 local species have been propagated here. Among them are the walking stick orchid, with its white or rosy-lavender flowers opening upside-down, and the spider or lily-leaf orchid, with its lilly-like leaf, and flowers resembling small spiders, each with its legs spread out on a web. Above the orchid garden, native shrubs and flowers carpet the hillsides and the surrounds of craggy Goddess of Mercy peak.

Yet had you visited when the farm was first established, in 1956, you would have found the valley denuded, its slopes stony and degraded of good soils. On seeing the proposed farmland, you might well have agreed with the Chinese and European agriculturalists who declared the hillsides valueless. Now, with hindsight, you can see how wrong they were; the area has been transformed.

The formula for the transformation is deceptively simple: Vision, and hard work. Vision on the part of the farm's founders, the philanthropic brothers Horace and Lawrence Kadoorie; hard work on the part of local villagers.

While the transformation was underway, botanists showed that, although the flora was impoverished, it was still interesting. Thirty-five species of orchids - one-third of Hong Kong's total - were discovered growing wild. Some were previously unknown in Hong Kong. Other firsts for Hong Kong included the Guangdong silver bell, named for its dainty, white bell-like flowers. One of the trees, the manglieta, had been thought extinct in Hong Kong until one was discovered here. Another, Kadoorie's persea, was new to science.

The broad story of the farm's landscape - virtually laid waste by man, yet with rare and interesting species surviving, and now green again - has been repeated in many parts of Hong Kong. Yet though there are places like this where wildlife is on the rebound, none is any more than a shadow of Hong Kong's forests past.