By Susannah Kitching
Over 3 weeks in May the department presented courses, commissioned by
the Landscape Bureau of Wuhan City, Hubei Province. Wuhan is the fifth largest
Chinese city of approximately 8 million, growing at an extremely rapid pace,
with aspirations to join the first tier cities of Beijing and Shanghai. It is
an industrial city, with a new focus on the production of optics.
Leo Zhang, who invited Renee Davies and Ian Henderson to Wuhan last
September, had organized these courses. Ian, Susannah Kitching, and Yue Yu, of
Xanthe White Design, who translated, delivered them. The focus of the modules
was on planting design, green infrastructure, low impact design (LID), and new
management technologies. This teaching was done in collaboration with Chris
Bentley, director of Boffa Miskell, Shanghai, and Swallow Wang, who presented
their Chinese projects.
The Landscape Bureau has 1400 employees, with 13 district offices, a
Design Institute of 180 and responsibility for the management of many parks,
streets, nurseries and even a bonsai department.
In total 120 Landscape Bureau employees attended the presentations,
received
course books, which had been produced by Susannah, and were presented
with attendance certificates.
While in China staff had the priviledge of visiting some of the famous traditional gardens of Suzhou - images follow of these inspiring Chinese gardens.
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