In this park, we don’t plant trees, we let nature plant them.

I believe that all the workers are like me.

Repeating the same routine every day

When the sunrise is the most beautiful, I am squeezed into a can of luncheon meat in the subway

As the sun sets, I am still struggling with trivial tasks

Until the evening when the office lights are turned off

Diving into the lonely, cold night

Hurrying through the concrete jungle

No one cares about the trees and flowers on the roadside

Everyone only cares about the wallet in their pocket

Can it solve the problem of food and clothing for the day?

However!

Life is not just about the present

There are also poems and distant places~~

I didn't expect that some people "eat dirt" every day

Some people use "earth" to play

Wonderful, unique, ingenious...natural art

Now let's give a round of applause to the "Master of Changing Soil" landscape designer Pang Wei to share his thoughts on the relationship between man and nature - - - - - -

01/Artificial park VS natural park, what is the difference?

China's urbanization has been growing larger and larger over the past few decades, and at the same time, it has also become increasingly hardened.

There is a term called concrete jungle, which refers to the hard steel bars, concrete, glass, roads, and building ceilings that make up the city. It is actually not an easy task for us to obtain a piece of land with natural properties in a highly densely populated city.

Parks are public lands in cities with more natural attributes. They have more green plants, including flowers, grasses, trees and shrubs.

But the park is actually in a state of slow artificial erosion. For example, a lot of grass has become semi-artificial, called "decorative grass", and the land under the grass is not real, but often a parking lot.

Nowadays, people are keen on decorative plants. Many plants are actually artificially cultivated varieties, which rely on strange colors to present an unnatural tendency. A typical example is the prevalence of patterned flower beds, which use plants as a palette to match various colors.

We show such parks to children and tell them that this is nature, but this is actually a distortion. So the problem is how do we make children realize that we are children of nature and what nature really looks like?

Nowadays, no matter how small a park is, it is actually the result of human will and human selection, such as the will of the park director and the gardener. It is rarely the true will of nature.

Sometimes the will of nature comes, such as a bird brings a seed, the wind blows a seed, an insect spreads a seed, and a plant grows, but we often call it wild, and sometimes even gardeners dig it up.

The will of nature is occasionally revealed, but we still regard it as a negative and destructive factor. These widespread phenomena are actually worthy of our deep consideration.

Mr. Duan Yi-fu, a Chinese-American human geographer who passed away some time ago, talked about the relationship between humans and nature.

It is believed that we humans escaped from nature. Nature is full of dangers, including tigers, leopards, wolves, snakes and ferocious beasts. During the millions of years of growth, humans have accumulated many enemies. The reason why we build houses and cities is actually to escape from the dangers of nature. People hope to gain a sense of security in cities and houses.

But can we really and completely isolate ourselves from nature by leaving it and escaping from it? Probably not, we still need to grow with plants and interact with animals.

After all, humans are a species that comes from nature. How to balance the relationship between humans and nature is a very important civilization topic that we need to think about together.

02/What would a park look like without any plants?

We recently built a park in Shenzhen, Guangdong. It was built for the 19th World Botanical Congress. It is a park where no plants are planted, including no grass, no flowers, and no trees. We just changed the soil.

Because the original site of that place was a landfill for construction waste, we simply improved the soil and replaced it with soil from some representative places.

When the park was built, it was desolate, but the desolation was soon broken as the wind, birds, and insects brought seeds, and there may even be some residual seeds in the soil.

China's main territory is in the temperate zone, with a small amount of subarctic zone, but here we are in the subtropical zone. A little further south to Hainan Island is close to the tropics. Perhaps only southern Yunnan and southern Guangdong are subtropical areas in China. This is a particularly precious resource.

My classmate told me that he sometimes forgot to bring his shovel home when he went to work, and when he went back to get it two days later, he found that the shovel had grown into a tree. Of course, this is a joke, which means that Guangdong has abundant rainfall and sunshine, and can be said to be a paradise for plants.

So our park didn't have anything planted at first, but soon a lot of new plants grew there, including some invasive alien species, truly revealing the will of nature.

03/What is the practical significance of creating a “natural park”?

Shenzhen has launched a 2121 plan, hoping to allow science and popular science organizations to continuously observe this land for 100 years.

Without human intervention, which plants will grow better, which plants will be eliminated, and whether new species will be involved. It completely reveals the land's own wishes and will, which is a very interesting thing.

As children of nature, we have actually been alienated from nature for a long time. Our jumping ability, running ability, climbing ability and ability to survive outdoors have actually deteriorated rapidly.

If we are given a real nature, how will we face it? To what extent will our children be able to cope with a real outdoor life in the future? In some passive environments such as war and famine, will our children lose the ability and will to survive?

So I think it is a serious topic to be prepared for danger in times of peace and to cultivate the ability to survive in the face of hardships and natural conditions under today's relatively relaxed and superior technological living conditions.

Pang Wei

Landscape Designer

This article only represents the author's views and does not represent the position of this brand.