What plants are in our gardens?

What do exotic species look like?
What impact do they have on the garden?
As young garden owners?
How will we protect our gardens?
How do we build our gardens?

On the morning of 10 July 2021, team of metrostudio came to the Taiziwan Primary School to lead the students in a fun and practical work experience - Plants War. The first step in the "Dream Garden" project was to investigate the background of the plants on site, clean up the exotic plant species and draw a dream garden together!

This is the first live event after winning the "Build Together x Design" - "Blossom Nanshan" community garden project in Nanshan District, organised by Shenzhen Urban Design Promotion Centre. The event was supported by Taiziwan Primary School and co-organised by metrostudio, Shenzhen Green Foundation, The Nature Conservancy and Shekou Community Foundation.

This time, we have given the children the initiative to protect and build their gardens, with the designers as participants, guides and the dream builders behind these little garden owners.

▷ PLANT CLASS

Building a garden starts with getting to know your own little garden. The day started with a presentation by the metrostudio team on the arrangements for the whole building together project and an explanation of the types of plants on site.

Curious children looked at the introduction of the plant species on the board and swarmed around the designers, listening carefully and attentively to their explanations and constantly asking questions.

▷ PLANTS WAR

Immediately afterwards, the designers took four small teams of more than 20 children to the garden site, distributed the working tools; divided the main battlefield of plant cleaning for each group; placed the team flags; under the guidance of director Huang Hongju and director Yang Liu of metrostudio, labeled each plant, a ritualistic and fun "Plants War" was officially opened.

"This one is the 'garden buddy' we have to protect, and that one is the 'big boss' we have to defeat, come on everyone!" The children took turns to pull up plants with particularly deep roots, each time they succeeded in removing an invasive plant, there was a roar of cheer.

▷ MY DREAM GARDEN

At the end of the clean-up, metrostudio designers took the children on site to check the trophies and record them, and the children already knew all about these invasive plants.

Faced with the cleaned up site and how it will be built in the future, each child carefully wrote down his or her wishes and, with a brush, painted his or her dream garden.

On-site experience and learning is an indispensable part of children's nature education, and through a "Plants War", we conveyed our philosophy of children's education: let children return to nature, let children become little masters of the garden, learn to protect it, portray it and build it! Metrostudio will use its professional strength to take care of this little dream and help it to become a reality.

The"Plants War", officially opens the way for Metrostudio + Children to build a dream garden together. Stay tuned for the next event to see how the building will unfold in the future!