THE International Horticultural Exhibition 2024 — which opened in Chengdu, capital of southwest China’s Sichuan Province, last week — offers a comprehensive and on-site “101 handbook” for gardening devotees worldwide, with a kaleidoscope of horticultural technologies and garden arts from home and abroad showcased at the event.

According to Zhou Jun, deputy head of Chengdu’s park city construction management bureau, this year’s edition has built 39 international gardens, covering the world’s major styles of British, French, Japanese, Italian, Middle Eastern and Southeast Asian garden design.

The numbers of gardens on display, foreign gardens and those undertaken by industrial associations and companies have all surpassed previous records of the expo.

Zhou added that the expo’s major underlying value will be the exchanges and mutual learning as it presents new plant varieties, gardening products and technologies, and novel garden design ideas.

Global urban gardening fad

Chengdu has a rich history that spans over two millennia. Its unique natural geography provides the lush urban environment with greenery all year round and diverse blooming flowers in each season, which has long been hailed by poets and writers since ancient times.

The expo’s gardens are on display until October 28, highlighting the captivating cultural essence of Sichuan, the Eastern philosophy of residential living, as well as diverse international gardening esthetics.

Apart from foreign exhibitors, the event also invites multiple Chinese cities to demonstrate their own architectural and gardening features.

The Beijing Garden follows the layout of its ancient imperial gardens, while the Shanghai Garden showcases the city’s fragrant flora. Visitors can be immersed in a verdant canvas of trees and grass, experiencing the century-old beauty of the Chinese seashore stack bridges, the northwest landscapes along the Yellow River and the delicate elegance of southern residential houses all at once.

The burgeoning urban gardening heat in China has inspired growing communication and cooperation between different Chinese regions and attracted worldwide gardeners.

Qiu Yamin, a promotion ambassador of the Chengdu horticultural expo, has her own botanical garden of more than 3,000 square meters, with more than 2,000 kinds of plants inside.

“I hope to further promote home gardening via the expo by visiting ordinary households and doing livestreaming shows to tell the stories of flower growers,” Qiu said.

“At the same time, I will also take this opportunity to learn and exchange with international counterparts and spread our Chinese horticultural concepts to the whole world.”

The 46-year-old Canadian garden lover Chad Sinclair has been studying Sichuan’s characteristic penjing, the ancient Chinese art of shaping trees and depicting landscapes in miniature, in Chongzhou City for about two decades.

He has learned about traditional Chinese paintings, tea culture and the like to enrich his penjing content.

Currently, Sinclair has made more than 500 pieces of penjing art, each pictured and shared with global netizens via social media platforms.

“I really want to push the doors open and get people to come over here and appreciate the Sichuan-style penjing, the local culture including the magical face change in Sichuan Opera, spicy food, and giant pandas,” said Sinclair, explaining his initial intention of becoming the expo’s promotion ambassador.

ZION Holding Co, headquartered in Moscow, Russia, has created a “space garden” at the expo’s sub-venue in Pidu District. The garden showcases the technology of growing plants in space to spark the public’s imagination of the development of high-tech floral planting.

“China’s horticultural market is the fastest growing market in the world with great potential,” said Igor Melnikov, CEO of ZION Holding.

“With the increasing number of flower gardening enthusiasts in Chinese families and their growing interest in high-quality home life, I believe that China’s horticultural economy will develop better and better,” he said.

Eco benefits in tandem

In recent years, there has been a surge in demand among urban residents for closer contact with Mother Nature, leading to a global urban gardening fever.

Growing flowers and even vegetables at home is not only an effective way to improve one’s quality of life in the concrete jungle and find happiness in fast-paced modern living but also a significant economic opportunity that can contribute to rural revitalization and ecological development.

As tourists walk through the woods, tiny fireflies can be found flickering all around at night, creating a breathtaking sight in Tiantai Mountain, Qionglai City administered by Chengdu. This year’s expo sets a sub-venue in Qionglai, home to a renowned firefly sightseeing base.

“The increasing popularity of gardening among the urbanites raises their awareness to protect the environment and preserve the local ecosystem in Sichuan, thus fueling the development of the rural tourism sector,” said Wang Shuai, deputy head of Tiantai Mountain scenic area’s management bureau.

Every April to November is the best period to view the lively creatures in Tiantai Mountain. Fireflies are a typical ecological environment indicator species with high demands in their habitats, said Liu Qiang, a staff member of the Tiantai Mountain scenic area.

“Thanks to the fresh air, clean water and dense forest of Tiantai Mountain, more than 20 species of fireflies can be spotted here,” Liu added.

Many local villagers have run their own homestay businesses thanks to the influx of tourists.

“Last year alone, we received nearly 2,000 people in a mere month during the peak season, and this year we have cleaned 16 rooms ahead of schedule, poised to welcome the guests,” said Wang Xinghai, a 65-year-old local resident in Tiantaishan Township of Qionglai.

At a time when the world is facing climate change and other challenges, the International Association of Horticultural Producers believes that modern cities should strive to be greener and integrate more plants into the living scenarios of their residents, said Tim Briercliffe, secretary-general of the association.

The International Horticultural Exhibition 2024 Chengdu is expected to make more citizens feel the beauty of nature and hold the common belief that the solution to future crises lies in plants and nature, Briercliffe noted.

“They will go home with some ideas of how they can have a plant in their home and in the bit of place they have. You don’t need a lot of space to be able to start or enjoy architecture and the use of plants,” he said, adding that necessary knowledge can be obtained from the expo and further applied at home.

Through the garden demonstration of the event, people can learn to change their lifestyle and thus enhance the interlink between vegetation and urban landscape in modern life, according to Briercliffe.