Blake Garden, Urban park in Sheung Wan, Hong Kong.
Blake Garden is a public park in the Central and Western District of Hong Kong with several sports facilities. It contains three basketball courts, two soccer pitches, and one volleyball court set within green space.
Blake Garden occupies the site of a densely populated Chinese neighbourhood that was bought up and demolished after the 1894 bubonic plague outbreak centred on Tai Ping Shan Street. In April 1903 Governor Henry Arthur Blake proposed turning the unbuilt part of Tai Ping Shan into a garden for the city's most crowded district, approved that June. During the Japanese occupation it was renamed People's Sports Ground.
In July 2022 the LCSD, the Architectural Services Department and the Hong Kong Design Institute repainted the courts under the theme "Universal Celebration", adding figures and red-billed blue magpies as festive motifs. The birds and human figures now cover the striped upper pitch visible from the terraces. Schools, charities and cultural groups still rent the courts for sports training, competitions and festival evenings such as Mid-Autumn and Lantern Festival.
The courts sit on terraced levels linked by stairs, with the striped multi-colour surface on the upper level and the green hard court below; green mesh fencing separates them. Enter from Tai Ping Shan Street on the north side. The whole site is smoke-free under Hong Kong's smoking ordinance.
The garden's Chinese name, 卜公花園, comes from Governor Henry Arthur Blake's Cantonese rendering, 卜力, and locals call it 花園仔, "little garden". A plaque in the park marks the 1894 bubonic plague outbreak centred on Tai Ping Shan Street, the event that led to the demolition of the houses on this site.
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