Quarry Gardens in Nanning Garden Expo Park / ATELIER DYJG

2018 China International Garden Expo was held in Nanning, positioned along a river in the city’s hilly outskirts. Interspersed in the southeast section of the site is a series of quarries. The organizing committee hoped to transform seven of the relatively intact quarries into distinctive gardens displaying in the garden expo. The site covers an area of about 33 hectares. Several years had passed since mining at some of the quarries onsite ceased, yet two of the quarries persisted in mining activities until the city won the expo bid. These quarries suffered blasting during the mining that caused fragmented surfaces and rugged landforms at the pit bottom. The site was strewn with dilapidated hills, towering cliffs, deserted land surfaces, bottomless ponds, piles of abandoned soil and gravel, rusty quarrying equipment, etc.