Green Fun Articles

Greening Hong Kong The Landscaping Project of Hong Kong International Airport

Index

Airport Authority is committed to maintaining a landscape environment that is lush, vibrant and adds a further dimension of excitement to the experience of all those who arrive, depart and work at the Airport. New opportunities for development and improvement of the landscape will be sought as the island environment matures, and as commercial and airport related development continues into the 21st Century. The landscaping of the island to date has been undertaken in two phases. The first of these was prior to Airport opening in 1998, which concentrated on the huge areas of grass seeding required adjacent to runways and taxiways to provide a base framework for more intensive planting at a later date. The design of the second and latest phase began in 1999, and was largely completed during the year 2000. The second phase identified the following areas as high impact zones for landscape beautification: The southern road and rail approach to the site, the expressway approach to the terminal, the external car parks, major traffic interchanges, and the coach and limousine pick up areas to the east of the Ground Transportation Centre. The 2000 landscape project involved the planting of approximately 2 million plants over a period of seven months. Included amongst these are 2,400 palm trees, 20,000 other trees, 360,000 bulbs and the remainder in the form of various shrubs. Airport flight safely has played an important part in the development of the landscape and accounts for many of the design features and species selection. As Hong Kong lies along the migratory route for many birds, it has been important to choose trees and shrubs that do not develop seeds that are attractive to these and indigenous birds, or which encourage nesting. This is one of the factors that accounts for the extensive use of Palms and Jacaranda trees over other potential species. Apart from bird control issues, landscaping at airport site has been constrained by aircraft/airport safely requirements including security and height restrictions. Other controlling factors are irrigation, soil quality and the need to avoid planting in many areas where large reserves have been set aside for underground services needed for future development of the island. The existing ground conditions consist mainly of rock rubble and marine fill from the original Chek Lap Kok island and this, together with the coastal aspect, contrive to limit the variety of plants. Tree and shrub species have, in the main, been selected for hardiness to withstand these conditions including salt winds, saline soil and drought. However, improvements will continue to be made as the Authority monitors the relative success of the many different types of planting in the equally diverse microclimatic and ground conditions that exist on the island. Hong Kong Airport Authority December 2002