SPORT AND RECREATION
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The Parks and Playgrounds Section of the Urban Services Department carries out or supervises all gardening development and maintenance in public recreation areas, the grounds of most Government schools, hospitals, offices and quarters, and the grassed areas at the Airport, covering in all some 537 acres. Five nurseries grow ornamental trees, shrubs and other plants, and can produce several thousand potted plants for decoration at official occasions.
The Section is also responsible for the care and maintenance of roadside trees in the urban areas. Undergrowth was cleared at important road points to improve traffic visibility and along coastal roads and vantage grounds for scenic purposes.
The Section contains a botanical branch which takes care of, and adds to, a collection of over 29,000 specimens in an air- conditioned Herbarium. As well as maintaining this collection, started by Richard Brinsley Hinds in 1841, the branch also keeps in touch with institutions abroad and deals with phyto-sanitary control of live plants and plants produce leaving the Colony.
The Parks and Playgrounds Section is also in charge of the Lei Cheng Uk Tomb, which is believed to belong to either the Later Han (AD 25-200) or the Six Dynasties (200-589) period. This tomb was discovered in 1955 by workmen levelling a low mound on a building site in Kowloon. The funereal objects found in the Tomb are now in a small museum nearby.
Two inscribed stone tablets were erected at Sung Wong Toi Garden to record in English and Chinese the flight of the last Emperor of the Sung Dynasty, from the Mongols, and his tem- porary encampment in Kowloon."
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