Morning - the Orchid Garden
The Orchid Garden was laid out in the manner of a Jiangnan scholar's garden, which makes it the right place to start a day about southern garden-making, because the differences show up immediately. A Suzhou garden is organised around borrowed scenery and framed views at intimate scale, with water at the centre and architecture used as a viewing device. A Lingnan garden of the classic type is more open, more shaded, more interested in ventilation and in plants that will actually grow in a subtropical city - and, as the great merchant gardens of Foshan and Shunde show, more willing to use foreign materials and motifs. The Orchid Garden is small, quiet and almost unknown to visitors, and it exists for the cultivation of orchids. Your guide uses it to set out the argument the rest of the day tests.
Late morning - Yuexiu Hill as landscape
From the garden the day moves onto Yuexiu Hill and treats it as a designed landscape rather than a historic site: how a hill in the middle of a city was planted, terraced and given paths, and how the same ground has been used as parkland, defence and ceremonial space over two thousand years. The Five Rams made in 1959 - eleven metres high, carved from 130 blocks of granite - are looked at as a piece of civic sculpture in a garden setting, which is how the city actually uses them.
Lunch
A Cantonese lunch at the foot of the hill.
Afternoon - comparison, and the merchant gardens
The afternoon widens the frame. Zhenhai Tower, built in 1380 and the Guangzhou Museum since 1950, holds enough material on the city's building to compare what you saw in the morning with what merchants and officials were actually commissioning. Where the group is interested, we extend the programme in this direction rather than in the garden direction: the great surviving Lingnan merchant gardens are in Foshan and Shunde, two hours' driving, and are best done as a separate excursion. Tell us which way you would rather take it and we will build the day accordingly, including a specialist briefing on garden history if the group wants one - arranged in advance, subject to the speaker's availability.
Meals
Lunch
Accommodation
Day programme - no hotel night included.
