Fairy Lake Botanical Garden 仙湖植物园

About Fairy Lake Botanical Garden

Fairy Lake Botanical Garden (仙湖植物园) is a large botanical garden on Xianhu Road in Liantang Subdistrict (莲塘街道), Luohu District (罗湖区), Shenzhen. It lies between Wutong Mountain (梧桐山) on the east and Shenzhen Reservoir (深圳水库) on the west.

Work on the garden began in 1983, and it opened to the public in 1988. After 2007 the Chinese Academy of Sciences gradually took it on as a research and teaching base, and the academy's name now forms part of its full title. The China National Tourism Administration rated it a national AAAA tourist site in 2007, and the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development named it a national key park in 2008.

Planting is organised into 17 specialised collection areas holding more than 8,000 species. They include gardens for magnolias, palms, bamboo, rare trees, bonsai, medicinal plants, gymnosperms, spore-bearing plants, desert plants and shade plants. The National Cycad Conservation Center (国家苏铁种质资源保护中心) was set up here on 18 December 2012 and keeps cycads of 240 species from 10 genera and 3 families.

The grounds fall into six scenic zones: the gate area, the Tianshang Renjian ('heaven on earth') zone (天上人间景区), the lake, the temple zone, the fossil forest (化石森林) and the pine-and-azalea zone. Fairy Lake itself is man-made, with bridges, pagodas and halls around it; named garden features include the Jade Belt Bridge (玉带桥), the Eleven-Arch Bridge (十一孔桥), Longzun Pagoda (龙尊塔) and Tingtao Pavilion (听涛阁).

Hongfa Temple (弘法寺), a Han Chinese Buddhist temple backing onto Wutong Mountain, stands inside the garden. The monk Benhuan (本焕) came from Danxia Mountain (丹霞山) with ten disciples to break ground on 1 July 1985, and it is recorded as the first temple newly built in China after 1949. Zhao Puchu (赵朴初), then president of the Buddhist Association of China, wrote its name in 1986. On the first and fifteenth days of the first lunar month the temple draws such crowds that police are deployed to keep order.

What to look for

• Fairy Lake (仙湖), a man-made lake with bridges, pagodas and halls
• National Cycad Conservation Center (国家苏铁种质资源保护中心), with cycads of 240 species
• The fossil forest (化石森林), one of the garden's six scenic zones
• Hongfa Temple (弘法寺), a Buddhist temple begun in 1985 under the monk Benhuan
• Magnolia Garden (木兰园) and Palm Garden (棕榈园)
• Desert Plant Area (沙漠植物区) and Shade Plant Area (荫生植物区)
• Eleven-Arch Bridge (十一孔桥) and Longzun Pagoda (龙尊塔)

Location & getting there

Getting to Fairy Lake Botanical Garden

• Search for 仙湖植物园 with 深圳市 and 罗湖区.