This October, the biggest theme-park destination in the Middle East will open its doors in Jebel Ali. As eager visitors storm through the gates, they will be immersed in a world where it rains meatballs, pandas do kung fu and everything is awesome. Adventure will be the order of the day as guests explore themed rides and activities across three distinct parks: motiongate Dubai, Bollywood Parks Dubai and Legoland Dubai.
Covering a whopping 25 million square feet of land, the Dh10.5 billion Dubai Parks and Resorts project is epic in scale and intent. About 6.7 million ticketed visitors are expected in 2017, the park’s first full year of operation.
Amid all the excitement, visitors may be forgiven for missing some of the details – such as the grand planting programme by the park’s developer, Dubai Parks and Resorts. Years of preparation have gone in to ensureing that the venue will be lush with vegetation by the time the first visitors arrive.
It all started with a detailed plan of how the park would be planted, from the outermost road to every area within the space. The result was a tender calling for 15,860 trees, 6,100 palms and more than 1.4 million shrubs and ground-cover plants, all of which had to conform with local regulations. Dubai company Proscape won the bid and has been busy getting the plants ready since.
“They have solicited their suppliers worldwide and as a result we’re getting material in almost on a daily basis,” says Paul La France, chief projects officer at Dubai Parks and Resorts. It really is an international effort, with greenery coming from as far afield as China and Spain, as well as Italy, Thailand and India. Of course, there are also plenty of local varieties among the 376 different plant species.
“What we can procure locally, we do,” says La France. “It’s a good cost-saving measure, plus a lot of the low-water-use plants are procured locally. About 20 per cent are locally sourced and 80 per cent are imported. Of those imports, a lot are desert varieties as well.”
The race is now on, not only to get everything ready for opening day, but also to plant as much as possible before the height of summer. “As the plant material comes in and acclimatises, we get it in the ground as soon as possible, giving it time to adapt and grow, so when we open in October, the public will actually see a mature plant,” says La France.
“The goal is to have the vast majority of plant material planted by mid- to late-May, and that’s what all our contractors are working towards right now.”
So far, more than 350 Washingtonia palms have been planted, with more than 3,650 being tended to in the on-site nursery. Additionally, different sizes of the red flowering Delonix tree can be found throughout the grounds, with heights ranging from about 1.8 meters to eight metres.
“These will help to maintain a cohesion and an identity across the entire park,” says La France. “When people arrive and drive along the loop road, they will see a blast of red colour, March through May, as these trees bloom. It will really have a powerful effect for guests on arrival.
“You won’t see that density of colour in the parks, because each one has its own identity. For example, in Bollywood Parks we use a lot of Ficus that are local to the region; in Legoland we use plant material that is heavily cropped and pruned, to give that sense of folly. Each area is micro-designed and managed to meet the theme’s intent, and that was all part of the overall procurement process and why we had more than 350 different species.”
Each park has individual zones within it, and landscaping is a vital part of communicating that theme. For instance, the Kung Fu Panda zone will have bamboo varieties, while right next door, another exhibit will play with a sense of scale by using large- leaf plants.
“That’s what theme parks are all about,” says La France. “It’s total immersion, and part of that immersion is the plant material as well. If we have the same plant material across the entire area, it loses its character.”
Other impressive plantings will include 14 eight-metre-tall olive trees that are more than 200 years old. Sourced from plantations in Tuscany, as well as the south of Italy, the oldest trees are believed to be more than 300 years old. When they arrived they were totally defoliated, but just six weeks later were full of leaves again.
“The recovery period was quite fast,” says La France. “The species we picked were those we know will survive here. Olive trees are very hardy. These things survived 200 to 300 years of all sorts of temperatures and they’ll survive well here, too.”
Getting the olive trees and other plants acclimatised is a vital part of ensuring they are in full bloom by the time the crowds turn up. Part of that challenge has been dealt with by getting started on procurement and planting early, and by selecting items such as olive trees that had been prepared for travel well in advance.
However, to give all the different species the head-start they needed, the project team developed a large nursery to house and nurture the greenery as it arrived on site. Although part of the project’s development phase, the nursery will remain in place once the park is operational.
“We don’t have to worry about bringing plants in and putting them straight into the ground,” says La France. “We will have a stock of plant material in the nursery to fill in anything that gets trampled or may die, to maintain the landscape and give the perception to the public that it is always perfect.”
At about two million square feet, the nursery is a major operation in its own right. It has space for 15,000 trees and palms, and more than 900,000 shrubs and ground-cover plants. Four greenhouses significantly add to the capacity. The nursery also has storage tanks for irrigation, shade areas, two hothouses and several open-growing and holding areas. To minimise the level of waste, there is also a composting area.
Naturally, keeping all the plant material properly irrigated is crucial in a place where even the native species will need more than rainwater to thrive. To help manage water use, Dubai Parks and Resorts has included a water-treatment plant, which is expected to provide up to 30 per cent of the treated water needed for the resort, once open. The plant enables waste water to be treated on-site and reused for landscaping. Thanks to some smart design techniques, it is estimated that the park will use between 9,000 and 11,000 cubic metres of water per day, 75 per cent of the amount initially allotted to the project.
“Not only can you recycle, you can use smart design such as larger spacing between plants and not planting the backs of mounds, which guests won’t see,” says La France. “We also minimised the use of turf, which uses a lot of water, and utilised low-water plants in all the back-of-house areas, while deploying natives on the peripheries.”
Although it will take a few years for a lot of the plant material to fully mature and really fill in, the team is confident that come October, when the greenery is in “full lush”, it will make a striking impression.
“It will be an amazing experience for any guest who is coming on opening day,” says La France. “They will be surprised at what we have achieved; it’s unprecedented at this scale in the Middle East.”
weekend@thenational.ae