Chinese garden set to bloom

A garden is being planned to celebrate Chinese horticulture and enhance the landscape at the soon-to-be-restored Great Pagoda in London's Kew Gardens.

Tony Kirkham, head of the arboretum at Kew, said the project is to build a garden, but not in the context of a formal geometric layout. Instead, the plan is to develop an enhanced landscape of Chinese plants with interesting botanical and medicinal values and histories to harmonize the landscape surrounding the pagoda.

"We have a very good collection of Chinese plants across the gardens in various collections and areas," he said. "This provides an opportunity to strengthen the original cultivations with a more concentrated representation of plants from China and improve our visitors' opportunities to understand Chinese flora."