A major attraction at this year's International Garden Expo now taking place in southern Beijing is a sunken garden dubbed the Jinxiu Valley.

 

　　CRI's Zhang Ru tells us more about this garden, which has sprouted from a former sand-pit.

 

　　Visitor Wang Jie is a fan of landscape design. He says Jinxiu Valley is a must-see in the park.

 

　　"It is novelty to me. They built the garden based on the existing topography. I've heard that this place used to be a landfill. It's good to see it's now been turned into a sunken garden."

 

　　It's hard to believe just a few years ago, this fairyland garden was a 30-meter-deep pit full of garbage covering an area equivalent to 20 football fields.

 

　　The design of the sunken garden was inspired by the Butchart Gardens in Canada. This area was used for mining limestone until the Butcharts began planting trees and flowers.

 

　　Xia Chenggang, one of the designers of the valley, explains more about the transformation.

 

　　"At the very beginning, when we stood in the pit and looked up, we could only see a horizontal skyline. If we hadn't change the terrain, no matter how many trees we planted here, it would still looked like a pit, at best a green pit. So our first step was to make the land look like it's undulating."

 

　　Xia says there are more than 350 kinds of flowers and trees growing in the Jinxiu Valley. Visitors can enjoy different views in different seasons.

 

　　Advance irrigation technology was also used. Details of each tree in the valley was fed into a computer. The system figures out how much water each tree needs. When it rains, the system can calculate how much rainwater a tree has absorbed and then readjust as necessary.

 

　　The Jinxiu Valley and nearby Beijing Park featuring traditional Beijing architecture were combined into a major attraction of the Garden Expo, known as "Big Beijing Park Area."

 

　　Xia Chenggang is also chief designer of the Beijing Park. He says the Beijing Park and the Jinxiu Valley represent the city's past and future.

 

　　"Our initial idea was to turn the sand pit and the high-speed railway near it into a new city attraction, representing the future of the city. The Beijing Park represents Beijing's past and splendid history. The two sites inherit the past and embrace the future."

 

　　Covering an area of around 400 football fields, the Jinxiu Valley is only a small part of the expo. Visitors can discover more in the coming months.

 

　　For CRI, I am Zhang Ru.