The Banyan Trees of Hong Kong (Kennedy Town and Sai Ying Pun)
Where best to appreciate banyan trees on Hong Kong Island, with appropriate dining recommendations.
Hong Kong (unlike Singapore) does not have an intensive tree-planting programme. But who needs one when you have birds to lend a helping hand? The urban banyans one comes across in Hong Kong are often accidents of nature, evidence of the opportunistic adaptative intelligence of the Ficus microcarpa, which, left to its own devices, has created pockets of urban forest, gifting Hong Kong city dwellers its shade and the drama of its root structures.
The trees mentioned in my photo essay are on Forbes Street in Kennedy Town, but there is another group of equally stunning stone wall banyans at King George V Memorial Park in Sai Ying Pun.
