Locked-down horticulturalist laments missing all the blooms of spring
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Yu Lixia, a horticultural engineer at Chenshan Botanical Garden in Songjiang District, has spent the past 11 years caring for the plants. But she has stayed put in her neighborhood locked-down since around March 20 and watched as spring passed.
Feeling reminiscent about the botanical garden in its normalcy, Yu saw only the several magnolia trees under her balcony bud, bloom and become leafy.
But for the citywide lockdown, Yu would have been eagerly working through the garden, counting and taken records of spring flowers and guiding the gardeners to trim and fertilize the trees.
For Yu, spring is a sweet and busy season. Too many flowers — cherries, begonias, plums, lily magnolias and pear flowers — bloom and urge her to take notes. So she felt sorry she had missed them all this year due to the pandemic resurgence.
“Tourists visit the botanical garden in spring mainly for its cherries and baby blue eyes,” Yu recalled. “The end of March is the blossom season of Someiyoshino cherries which start to bloom around March 20. The pinkish petals then gradually turn white. Around March 28 the trees start to drop their petals and create ‘cherry rain’,” she said.
“During the annual cherry season the two cherry avenues of the botanical garden would be crowded with tourists. Bicycles would not be allowed in. The Kawazu Sakura cherries bloom first, with their canopies looking like clumps of pinkish mists. The Someiyoshino cherries follow suit to bloom with snowy flowers. The entire month is usually so ceremonious and beautiful.”
Yu said April is the best season for baby blue eyes, the flower beds covering more than 10,000 square meters and forming a sea of color even bluer than the sky.
“Baby blue eyes have a high flower density. Sometimes they grow alone and sometimes they have been planted among corn poppies and California poppies and look like blue stars among a colored sea of flowers.”
The botanical garden houses a variety of spring flowers: the pink North American begonia, the purple cercis canadensis, cherries and peach flowers of different colors, Chinese peonies, Chinese snowballs, kerria japonica, meadow sweets, and Chinese wisteria, among others.
“I’ve been in home quarantine since March 20 and during that time I was allowed to return to the botanical garden for two days. The spring flowers tried to bloom and I was constantly running through the garden, taking as many notes as possible,” Yu said.
“It’s a horticultural engineer’s job to observe the plants, collect data and record the plants’ flowering and growing conditions. These works help with seeding, daily maintenance and scientific popularization of plants.”
During the current lockdown, the botanical garden has allocated 14 workers to stay tending the plants, but everybody just missed the time they should have spent in the garden.
“We observe the plants throughout the year and counting flowers is part of our job. It might seem to be monotonous and time-consuming, but is very necessary. Through counting flowers, we get to know whether our planting and caring measures are efficient, and whether fertilization and trimming in certain periods really help with raising flower quality and quantity,” Yu said.
“The abnormal weather conditions in autumn and winter last year caused confusion for some plants. The Kawazu Sakura cherries started to bloom as early as October and kept on flowering non-stop till winter. In October and November they bloomed about 30-40 percent of their entire flower volume for the year. Plants are very honest. Once the leaves fall, they start preparing to bud. And as soon as the nutrients and sunshine are enough, they start to bloom.
“We worry about the counter-season blooming, afraid the trees might consume too many nutrients and the winter temperatures might hurt their buds. So we set up wind-breaks and warming nets over the cherry avenues and spread mixed fertilizers with high levels of phosphorus and potassium. And luckily the cherries bloomed normally and timely this time.”
Yu thinks tourists visit the botanical garden to catch the best scenery at a certain time. The gardeners and horticultural engineers, however, think every season has its particular charm and even bare branches with tiny buds are encouraging.
“People hold different views about flowers. The cherries, being camera-friendly, are extremely popular. But in my cellphone, I’ve stored pictures of flowers with their unique elements, such as Kiku Zakura. The plant is leafy with few flowers, but each flower has about 300 petals. That’s the unique element I like in particular for that plant,” Yu said.
“After the lockdown, there’ll still be many flowers waiting for our visit. I like taking photos of buds and predicting how long before they will bloom. I still remember the first day I worked at the botanical garden. There were many flower buds trying to bloom on that day. Their life force was particularly encouraging.”
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