AS much of Shanghai’s past falls to the bulldozers, gardening architect Gu Zheng steels his determination to preserve the legacy of what is being lost.

Gu, who just turned 91, is compiling a book that will feature 100 gardens in the Yangtze River Delta, many of them gone forever. The book will highlight their historic beauty and perhaps provide insights to instill a cultural conscience into urban planning.

“It’s such a pity that so many of our ancient gardens have been demolished during upheavals or redevelopment,” Gu told Shanghai Daily in an exclusive interview. “The original number of historic gardens in Shanghai was smaller than in Beijing or Suzhou, and what remains is dwarfed by comparison.”

Shanghai has become celebrated in the world for combining Chinese and Western styles in its modern buildings. Too often, the importance of classical gardens has been overlooked, according to Gu.

“When we talk of ancient royal gardens and stately private mansions, we most often think of Beijing and Suzhou,” said Gu. “It’s hard for people to find the vestiges of classical Chinese gardens in Shanghai. Maybe the only one they know is the Yuyuan Garden downtown.”

The government, he said, has had limited success in its pledges to preserve and promote classic gardens and architecture in the city.

Gu worked in gardens all his life.

He sees them as more than just green oases in the urban jungle of skyscrapers. They are artistic and cultural testaments to our history, he said.

In his career, Gu designed many new landscapes in the city and restored a few classical gardens, but the number of the latter pale against those that have disappeared.

Born in Wuxi in neighboring Jiangsu Province, Gu traveled widely with his family during his childhood. His father, who studied in France, participated in the design of Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum in Nanjing and in the renovation of royal gardens in Beijing.

His father criss-crossed China and Europe, taking photos and drawing pictures of landscapes as he went. The interest rubbed off on his son, who started by drawing on walls with pencils and crayons. His father never discouraged the boy, instead providing him with paper for his drawings.

Gu was admitted to a Shanghai specialized college attached to Shanghai Jiao Tong University to study civil engineering.

After graduation in 1948, he was assigned to work for the then Shanghai Municipal Council and later the bureau of landscape.

Gu said his first project for the city was an early transformation of People’s Park, once a racecourse, into an exposition grounds for local specialties.

It was, he recalls, a somewhat empty redecoration of the site.

In his first major gardening project, he was assigned to co-design buildings for Shanghai Zoo in the western suburbs of the city in 1957. The site was a former golf course. Gu said he designed venues to house tigers, lions and penguins.

Due to lack of construction funds, Gu and his fellow colleagues were forced to use bamboo instead of steel bars for the enclosures.

“It took a lot of experimentation to make sure that the tension force and tenacity of the bamboo was as close to steel as possible,” he said.

The work was so successful that Gu wrote up his findings in a paper on use of bamboo in architecture, but his sketches were way ahead of their time.

He also contributed to the design of three nursery gardens, the botanic garden and other parks in Shanghai at that time.

The 10 years of the Cultural Revolution, which ended in 1976, suspended his career and resulted in the destruction of many historic buildings and classical gardens.

When he resumed his career, it flourished. Gu was involved in the restoration of places such as the Qushui Garden in the Qingpu District and the Guyi Garden in Jiading. His crowning achievement at that time was the renovation of Qiuxia Garden, or “the garden of autumn glow.” It dated back to the Ming Dynasty and had been owned by several local families and later the God Temple.

“When we actually located the old garden in Jiading, it was decrepit and one of its building had been used as a school,” Gu said. “We found parts of houses, pavilions and rockery, the pond was filled with soil and trees had been chopped down. But we had no money to restore it.”

Funding didn’t come until decades later in 1980.

The restoration work was difficult because neither Gu nor his colleague knew the garden’s original appearance. They visited libraries and archives, searching through records and literary references. They also talked to old-timers who remembered the garden before its demise.

Fortunately, Gu and another team leader, Tian Liju, found a couplet in Shanghai Museum that described the scenery in the garden.

The left roll of the document showed people peering at green willows in the springtime, white lotus in the summer, orange osmanthus in autumn and pine trees in winter. The right side showed the locations of the loft, pavilion and pond.

The team salvaged old wood from the demolition of nearby buildings to use in the garden’s reconstruction. The old timbers showed a construction style common in old Jiading.

Once restored, the garden was classified as a Shanghai cultural relic and placed under heritage protection. It has been visited by tens of thousands of people, including distinguished guests.

Many artistic celebrities wrote inscriptions and drew paintings of the garden, enhancing its profile as a Gu masterwork. Even today, the garden is a favorite place of solitude for Chinese painters and calligraphers.

Not all garden remains were so successfully rehabilitated. Many were beyond repair.

Among the lost is the Luxiang Garden, or “dew fragrance garden,” that will feature in Gu’s book. It is believed to have been built in the Ming Dynasty by a family also surnamed Gu, who were famous for an embroidery style that still bears their name. The garden was destroyed during the first Opium War.

Luxiangyuan Road near People’s Square marks the original location of the garden.

Looking back, looking forward. Gu said he now worries that the young generation has lost interest in gardening. Being a gardener is considered a low-status job in China.

“Many people misunderstand gardening,” he said. “Some think it’s simply about maintaining parks. Not a cool job. Actually, gardening involves various disciplines, including architecture, municipal planning and environmental studies. But the pay for gardeners is truly unattractive.”

Besides gardens, Gu has dedicated his later years to saving other sites of historical significance, like the tomb of Song Jiaoren, a Chinese revolutionary and founder of the Kuomintang. Historical evidence suggests that China’s then provisional president Yuan Shikai was responsible for Song’s assassination in Shanghai.

Song’s tomb was largely destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. Gu and his colleagues spared no effort in trying to recover fragments from the site to rebuild the tomb and its statues.

“It’s a matter of respect to both history and to a historical figure,” Gu said.

He has also been studying the gardens of local history notables, such as Qing Dynasty politicians Li Hongzhang and Kang Youwei, and Jewish business tycoon Silas Aaron Hardoon.

“There are also many old temples, towers, bridges and wells in Shanghai,” Gu added. “They may have interesting stories behind them. Preserving their historical value is a mission for all of us.”

Urban redevelopment is not merely about constructing new buildings, he said.

“It’s also about preserving a unique cultural legacy,” Gu explained. “Shanghai should enact ironclad legislation regarding historic preservation so it can’t be changed on whim when new leaders take over.”