A Magic Garden in Tainan Canal
Tainan, Taiwan, January 7, 2016
A magic floating garden will be greening up the Anping Canal in Tainan from this January 6th.
National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) initiated this project and the Tainan City Government was enthusiastic to provide support to experiment with this innovative concept of a floating garden to improve the city.
‘How can a floating garden improve the city?’, that was the quest for the class ‘Lowland Flooding and Management’ at NCKU.
25 International students found many benefits for a floating garden, examples are: improving water quality, cleaning air, providing habitat for animals, flood protection, city education and making it a tourist attraction.
But writing a report on these benefits wasn’t enough for NCKU professor Hsiao-Wen Wang and NCKU visiting expert Bart van Bueren. With their instructions, the students had the task to test their findings in building the floating garden.
For about one month the students teamed up with several experts and volunteers to forge a floating structure that could grow mangroves and other plants.
One of the challenges was to ensure it can last several years with minimal maintenance. To speed up the building process the team reconstructed an existing floating artwork from 2014.
In the base of the garden are Polystyrene foam-blocks from broken oyster-rafts. These rafts often break in storms, and the foam-blocks drift off and pollute nature for a hundred years.
These foam blocks were retrieved and packed in strong geotextile, instead of pollutants they have become the basis for growing new nature. This concept resulted in the Magic Garden of Anping which got opened this January 6th and can be seen from the east bridge along An Ping Road.
A Facebook page ‘Magic Garden 水岸漂浮島’ educates people more on the project and the growing mangroves.
A magic floating garden will be greening up the Anping Canal in Tainan from this January 6th.
National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) initiated this project and the Tainan City Government was enthusiastic to provide support to experiment with this innovative concept of a floating garden to improve the city.
‘How can a floating garden improve the city?’, that was the quest for the class ‘Lowland Flooding and Management’ at NCKU.
25 International students found many benefits for a floating garden, examples are: improving water quality, cleaning air, providing habitat for animals, flood protection, city education and making it a tourist attraction.
But writing a report on these benefits wasn’t enough for NCKU professor Hsiao-Wen Wang and NCKU visiting expert Bart van Bueren. With their instructions, the students had the task to test their findings in building the floating garden.
For about one month the students teamed up with several experts and volunteers to forge a floating structure that could grow mangroves and other plants.
One of the challenges was to ensure it can last several years with minimal maintenance. To speed up the building process the team reconstructed an existing floating artwork from 2014.
In the base of the garden are Polystyrene foam-blocks from broken oyster-rafts. These rafts often break in storms, and the foam-blocks drift off and pollute nature for a hundred years.
These foam blocks were retrieved and packed in strong geotextile, instead of pollutants they have become the basis for growing new nature. This concept resulted in the Magic Garden of Anping which got opened this January 6th and can be seen from the east bridge along An Ping Road.
A Facebook page ‘Magic Garden 水岸漂浮島’ educates people more on the project and the growing mangroves.
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