Charles Joseph Braine’s Green Bank, Hong Kong, 1848

Posted: October 3rd, 2026 | No Comments »

A series of botanical watercolour studies from “The Flora of Green Bank, Hong Kong”, 1848. The drawings were created by an anonymous Chinese School artist. Green Bank was an early grand residence and estate on Hong Kong Island owned by merchant and horticulturist Charles Joseph Braine situated in what is now Lan Kwai Fong. Braine worked as a partner for Dent & Co., one of the wealthiest and most powerful British merchant firms (Hongs) operating in China at the time. He served as a Justice of the Peace and was an active member of the Royal Asiatic Society.

When British residents moved from Macao to Hong Kong after the island was ceded, plants from Mr. Beale’s renowned botanical garden in Macao were safely relocated to the garden at Green Bank in 1845. Green Bank featured terraced gardens with potted plants brought from both Macao and Canton (Guangzhou) including bamboos, myrtles, gardenias, oleanders, camellias, azaleas, and roses. Green bank became famous and much visited – Scottish botanist Robert Fortune vividly detailed the estate’s spectacular variety of native and imported flora in his 1852 travelogue, A Journey to the Tea Countries of China.

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