Yu Wei, chief landscape engineer of the Zhejiang Urban and Rural Planning and Design Institute and a designer with the Design Consortium for the 15th China International Garden Expo.
The 15th China International Garden Expo is the World Expo of the horticulture industry and she will, through distinctive Eastern aesthetics, tell the story of China’s ecological civilization. This is no ordinary garden — it is a green narrative co-authored by the landscape itself and Wenzhou municipal administration, a story about letting the landscape speak, embedding culture in the earth, and giving ancient trees a new life.
◎ World Horticulture, Wenzhou Ensemble
This Garden Expo brings together the world’s finest horticultural art. It is made possible by the unique DNA of Wenzhou: we sent a global invitation to 800,000 overseas Chinese compatriots reaching over 200 chambers of commerce, ultimately creating a magnificent spectacle of 11 international gardens. Among the participants, nine countries — Uzbekistan, Italy, the United Kingdom, France, Japan, Thailand, the United States, Canada, and the Netherlands — established independent gardens, with every garden designed by renowned designers from that country to ensure cultural authenticity. For instance, the Italian Garden is created by the team of the Italian architect Stefano Boeri (a core planner of the Milan Expo). His design creatively reinterprets the classical vocabulary of Mediterranean architecture into symbolic forms — deconstructing classical colonnades into a three-dimensional grid system that integrates with the Wenzhou’s mountainous terrain as a new type of terraced carrier, creating a“ vertical forest” imbued with Italian spirit.
The International Federation of Landscape Architects (IFLA), participating for the first time, manifests its professional commitment through the“ fragrant ark”. Four flagpoles by the vessel embody sails. When the sea breeze sweeps across, the sails unfurl to display the“ I-F-L-A” emblem, creating a living, breathing professional symbol, enabling visitors to sense the landscape architects’ oath — like the ark — to safeguard Earth’s biodiversity and proclaim a harmonious coexistence between humanity and nature.
◎ Contemporary Expressions of Chinese Landscape
Beside the Italian Garden, we insisted on preserving a 200-meter-long water conservancy tunnel, transforming it into an immersive temporal-spatial waterway. Dynamic projections on the ceiling recreate how grapes and pomegranates traveled along the Silk Road into China two millennia ago. As small boats come out from the tunnel, the suddenly revealed Chinese classical garden area — Mountain Dwelling Paradise, using classical Chinese gardening techniques and reproducing the ideal environment from The Peach Blossom Spring by Tao Yuanming — creates a“ time-traveling”dialogue with the foreign gardens on the other side.
This Garden Expo is set amid authentic mountains and waters, tracing the origins of Chinese landscape gardening while celebrating the distinctive scenery of Zhejiang.
At the summit of Xianmen Mountain stands Guogong Tower, designed by Master Li Yonghong. It carries forward the city-building philosophy of Guo Pu, the founder of Chinese Feng Shui who, 1,700 years ago, chose the nine mountains that defined Wenzhou’s original site. Rising beside the lake, the China Pavilion—the Expo’s main exhibition hall—is designed by Academician Cheng Taining. Its undulating eaves echo the rolling mountains of Wenzhou and the rhythmic silhouettes of sails on the East China Sea. “Like mountains and waves, layered eaves and shifting shadows,” the design blends modern structural systems with traditional poetic imagery to create a contemporary expression of Chinese landscape aesthetics. Together with Guogong Tower, it creates a dialogue of high and low, ancient and modern, shaping a mutually respectful panorama.
◎ Life Lessons in Harmony Between People and Nature
A 200-year-old banyan tree in the garden once taught us a profound lesson: when we entered the construction site, we discovered that the hardening of the construction road and heavy vehicle traffic had damaged its root system, causing a large-scale yellowing of the leaves — a critical situation. After thorough discussion, we resolutely demolished the completed concrete pavement. When workers shattered the stone road that had oppressed the tree's roots, the tree was able to breathe more freely. The following spring, new green buds sprouted from the withered branches, and the old tree regained its health. Later, we relocated the road away from the tree and built nearby a station for rest, allowing more people, with peace of mind, to experience the harmonious beauty between humanity and nature.
Similarly, during the design phase of the China Pavilion, the Academician Cheng Taining, out of the same consideration, willingly adjusted his scheme, moving the position of the originally designed building backward to embrace two ancient banyan trees, creating a symbiotic relationship that has now become the popular photo spot Banyan Garden. The entrance of the British Garden features large native trees preserved, which, together with the lawn, form a typical English garden landscape. Such stories are found throughout the garden: the expo site has protected nine century-old banyan trees and over 17,000 new trees are planted. These living green beings eloquently bespeak China’s practice of ecological civilization construction — the Garden Expo is the very picture of the harmony between humanity and the green nature.
Today, as I inspect this soon-to-be-completed site, I often recall my first time standing on this garden ground three years ago. Back then, there was only the wind from the Oujiang River and lines on blueprints. Now, the wind carries the languages of gardens from various countries, the murmurs of ancient banyans and new green shoots, and the approaching footsteps of visitors. This is not an exhibition — it is a manifesto about how Wenzhou, in its own way, tells the world the Eastern green story of ecological civilization.