Few landscape architects have been asked how they would landscape China. Nancy Prine and Joe Anglin are two of them. Perhaps the only two.
The "China" Prine and Anglin have been landscaping is a miniaturization of that country, or a "10,000 mile journey through 5,000 years of history and culture," as the marketing people tell us.

The project is called Florida Splendid China, a $100,000,000 attraction located south of Orlando in Kissimmee, Florida, just one mile off the Walt Disney World property.
Splendid China features 60 miniature recreations of some of China's most notable historic, cultural and natural sites. Among these is a replication of the Great Wall, created with over six million individually laid one-inch bricks that runs over 2,600 feet of simulated mountainous terrain.

The Summer Palace. The Stone Forest is in the background.
The project is fashioned after an existing park in Senzchen, an economic zone located just outside Hong Kong. This highly successful attraction, developed by the Hong Kong conglomerate China Travel Service, spared no cost in achieving its degree of excellence. The same can be said for its Florida sister project, including the pivotal role of landscaping.

 
After their selection as project Landscape Architects, Prine and Anglin were to get the greatest challenge of their professional careers from Mr. Ma Chi Man, the Chairman of Splendid China and also its creator both in Senzchen and in Florida.
"The challenge," according to Mr. Man, "was not only to landscape a park that would serve as a background (and sometimes a foreground) for the exhibits, but also to plan a park that would be enjoyable and interesting to visitors, even if there were not exhibits at all."

Prine and Anglin envisioned a "botanical garden" that could both serve as a stage for the miniature sites and stand on its own. They never lost this view of their project, although there were times when vision and reality were at odds. One of these was the reality of an oriental garden for basically American visitors. "I won't call it compromise," Prine notes. "It was rather keeping the Western visitors mainly in focus while never losing sight of the oriental nature of the park. That way we created settings that are both acceptable and enjoyable to both cultures."

Prine also realized that another responsibility would be to pinpoint many Chinese locales by their landscaping. "China," she notes, "is a vast country that has every type of climate and terrain from mountain to desert and from tropical to frigid. Since it is not possible to accurately lay out the park geographically, it has been necessary to let visitors know when they are in northern China through the use of cedars and firs, and to depict southern regions with palms, bamboo and bold textured plants."

"One exception we have made to this general rule is the use of crepe myrtle throughout the park. The simple explanation is color. These hearty and colorful Asian natives bloom six and seven months of the year, and since their flowering season can be extended by pruning, they are abundantly useful in beautifying different parts of the park."
"Another exception is shade trees," Anglin says. "In Florida, direct sun in the summer can be a big problem. We designed the major walkways with heavy amounts of trees to provide shade. In addition, we have constructed shade structures along the walkways that provide areas where visitors can stop to enjoy and contemplate the scenes around them."

The trees selected include Leyland cypress, elms, hollies and oaks and were individually selected from mature trees grown in 200 gallon containers and rising 16' to 18' in height.
A major feature of the design for the garden is the transitional sizing of plant material from the 16-18 ft. materials along the shaded main walks down to the bonsai material around each exhibit. The designers incorporated a variety of materials such as cedar, juniper, and others planted at about 6' in height down to 3' in height in forest-like groupings. This downsizing transition for each exhibit creates an outdoor room and environment specific to a particular exhibit. As the garden matures this will become more and more apparent.

"We also gave maximum consideration to paving throughout the attraction, incorporating traditional textures, materials types and patterns, consistent with the character of the exhibit and its region," Anglin noted.
Prine planned the enhancement of key sites with unique landscaping. The Great Wall, for instance, is known for the rugged, ragged, mountainous terrain through which it runs. She simulated this with natural looking plants and turf, the latter of which tends to clump rather than grow tall. "This turf serves a dual purpose," she said. "Their clumping gives the area a rough look and also proves to be a great asset to the maintenance people, who only have to mow the undulating slopes a few times a year."

Among Splendid China's more notable sites are the Imperial Palace in the forbidden City, Beijing's Summer Palace and Temple of Heaven, the archaeological site of the Terra Cotta Warriors, the Leshan and Guynhin Buddhas and the Human Stone Forest.
Joe Anglin is a principal of Glatting Jackson Kercher Anglin Lopez Rinehart, Inc. Community Planners of Orlando, Florida.
Nancy Prine is a principal of Nancy Prine Landscape Architects, Orlando, Florida.