A former rubbish site is not most people’s first choice for a garden. UNESCO’s profile of Wuhan says the Jinkou landfill was regenerated as part of an international garden exhibition, using green and low-carbon design. It is one of the examples the city uses to explain why it belongs to the Creative Cities Network as a City of Design.
What happened at Jinkou
The C40 account dates the landfill’s closure to 2005 and describes restoration work beginning in 2014 across about fifty-two hectares. The project then formed part of the 2015 China International Garden Expo. Those dates separate the end of rubbish disposal, the treatment project and the public exhibition.
The recorded measures included an aerobic approach to stabilising waste, gas capture, soil reuse and planting with local species. Aerobic treatment involves oxygen: it concerns processes within the waste, rather than simply hiding everything under an attractive layer of earth.
The case study also records the reuse of more than a million cubic metres of soil. That is a project-scale quantity of material, not the depth of the soil everywhere or a measure of how much waste had disappeared. Keeping the units and their purpose clear makes the transformation more understandable.
These measures answer part of the question behind the garden photograph. Work had to address the former use of the site while creating its new surface. Planting was one component of a wider restoration, not a substitute for it.
The historical account is not a guarantee about current environmental performance. Continuing monitoring and care would need their own evidence. It does, however, let us describe an actual programme: a closed landfill, recorded treatment measures and a garden exhibition built around the changed site.
The garden has a second life beneath it
Changing the surface of a landfill does not make the buried waste cease to exist. That is the important distinction behind any account of a garden created on such a site. The landscape people enjoy and the systems managing what lies below it have to be understood together.
The United States Environmental Protection Agency explains, in its own landfill guidance, why closure involves continued care. It discusses cover systems, contaminated liquid, groundwater and gas monitoring. Those American requirements are not rules we can simply apply to Wuhan, but they illustrate the kinds of questions a former waste site can raise.
For Jinkou specifically, a C40 case study supplies a record of restoration measures beyond UNESCO’s short city profile. Its account is evidence of the documented project, rather than a fresh audit of how every system performs today.
That evidence would include what was done before the new use began, what is monitored afterwards and who is responsible for maintenance. These are less dramatic than a flower-filled photograph, but they explain how an attractive public landscape can continue to function.
Planting also has to be considered in relation to the land beneath it. The suitability of a design depends on the site’s conditions and protective systems, rather than a universal recipe for turning waste into greenery. The right questions are specific: which areas can be used, what must remain accessible and which activities could interfere with the site’s care?
Public usefulness matters alongside those technical questions. Routes, shade, seating and clear information affect whether a new landscape is welcoming. A successful opening event cannot answer whether the place remains comfortable and well maintained in ordinary use.
The transformation therefore has more than one timescale. Construction produces a visible change, while continuing care has to keep working after attention moves elsewhere. Describing the second timescale prevents regeneration from becoming a story that ends at the ribbon-cutting.
Wuhan’s example is interesting because it begins with a difficult site. The meaningful achievement would be a landscape whose new use and environmental responsibilities remain compatible. To understand that achievement properly, look beyond the flowers and ask what supports the garden’s life underneath them.
The garden did not begin with an empty plot. Its recorded restoration had to work with a previous use of the land, while making a new one possible. The planting is the visible part of a story that continues beneath the surface.
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Sources
- UNESCO Creative Cities Network: Wuhan profile
- US Environmental Protection Agency: Landfill closure and post-closure care
- C40 Cities: Good Practice Guide: Sustainable Solid Waste Systems, Jinkou landfill case study