I'm not sure about the element role match increasing the ability on a province that you kinda want to break... Getting one fate and one card doesn't seem like enough.

I like the idea of cards that are usable but get a little better with a matching role. Seems a promising route to keep heading down.

Actually I think these cards are supposed to be better outside the element in question. 

I think you are right, which is also odd. I like the mechanic, but in this implementation I find it a bit confusing. It's like, every except Air can use this Air province with Air themed benefits... Surely it would be thematically more sensible if this was a non-Air province that had some very opposite to Air effect, so Air roles would almost be handicapping themselves by it? I don't know.

Why would anyone use this over Manicured or Fertile? 

When you have no Air role, it has strength 3, which is worse, than either of them (in case you do not want it to be broken) and the ability, which is a one-off upon breaking. 

When you have an Air role, it has strength of 5, which is more difficult to break, but as the ability works once upon breaking, it's a farmable one, that does nothing. 

Both Manicured and Fertile have solid strength and repeated ability. 

So I consider this one quite weak for both cases.

I agree.

Having said that, maybe we're looking at eventually hitting a situation where every province you present is super-resilient, along with Miya Satoshi to fetch the precious +2 and +3 holdings. For sure, you're going to get ring-farmed to heck, but if you build a deck that intends to bid low through the game (thus keeping dishonor loss at bay) and which has the ability to build a slow lock, then a bunch of resilient provinces may be just what you need.

Don't think we're in the position yet where that makes much sense, but maybe not far off.