Planting Design 2013 Working Group 2 - Case Study B

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Antoniadis Botanic Garden, a foothold for native plants emphasis in Egypt

Name	Antoniades Botanic Garden
Location	Alexandria
Country	Egypt
Authors	Abdullah Arafa

Rationale: Why is this case interesting?

Antoniadis botanical garden is considered to be the oldest botanical garden in Egypt, it was established in 1860 and located at the east of Alexandria in Smouha district with an area of 189000 m2, it contains significant amount of different plant species that can thrive under Egyptian conditions and is considered as an important place for scholars ans students interested in horticulture, landscape or any plant relating discipline.

Antoniadis garden is an important historic botanic garden in Alexandria, Egypt, it resembles a multicultural classic landscape styles, it was built to imitate Versailles Palace in Paris where a villa of Sir Antoniades exists in the center of the garden in addition to several copies of classic European landscape styles such as Italian style, french style, Moorish style and others. the garden architecture and landscape is considered as a foot hold for scholars and researchers to view, process and learn different landscape cultures and designs through the European classic architecture and landscape design in addition to it's large floral composition that researchers and students from architecture, urban planning and horticulture majors come frequently to learn more about bioflora and plants which can thrive under Egyptian conditions.

Author's perspective

From the floral composition point of view, Antoniadis botanical garden is considered to be poor in plant context, about 132 species exist only inside the garden, in addition to poor maintenance and lack of good professionals the garden has collapsed in every aspects and divisions through the garden, this factors combined caused the overall deterioration of the garden form as general and the dramatic decrease of visitors through the garden.

As so a need for the development of the garden is a must, a master thesis was done by the assignment author to develop Antoniadis garden to a major scientific historic botanical garden, it included drawing current as-builts for the garden, as-built plant context, areas recognition and other documentations to emphasize, elaborate and document all the garden components, so on the future these contents will be available for the public and the garden staff since the garden administration itself has no documentation for the garden and also no available maps or layouts for the garden expect ones done by the Egyptian survey authority.

In addition to that the need of emphasizing the approach of using native plant species and ecology in landscapes is very important, most of Egyptian urban landscapes are foreign in style and there is no known use of Egyptian native plants and even no recorded ecological usage of plants in cities, Antoniadis garden could be the pioneer in the use of native plants in gardens and landscapes due to its unique location, historic value and scientific value which can be in the future a place to learn more about Egypt nativity and ecology.

Landscape and/or urban context of your case

Antoniades garden is a part of a greater garden complex called El-Nozha garden complex which is composed of the Rose garden, El-Nozha garden, Zoological garden and Antoniades garden. According to the Authors perspective Antoniadis garden is divided into five major parts; the central garden, Antoniades Villa and it's attached garden, Naval military base area, forest part and the garden nursery with attached administration buildings. the central garden is the main focus of the garden as it contains some the classic European landscape styles and by so dividing the garden into several mini gardens; the English garden, Italian Garden, Moorish garden, French garden, Royal glasshouse garden, Pentagon garden and Entrance garden, these gardens was referenced as the core of landscape design in Egypt and was considered to be a reference for Formal classic European style landscapes that was used for a long period as a style in design of landscape (since Egypt has no known landscape styles or studies) where several landscape projects were designed imitating Parts of Antoniadis garden till recently. These mini gardens posses the largest floral composition of Antoniadis botanic garden, but it is not recommended much to propose plant changing in design due to the historic value of the central garden and the palace area in fact the most appropriate area to develop and as a space for further increasing of the garden flora is the forest area.

The forest area is about 25430 m2, it was developed spontaneously by planting some seedling of trees to be a future nursery and was left unattended and unmaintained for a long time until natural selection of trees occurred and a number of trees flourished and grew, and due to lack of human contact with this area some wild species of birds and animals took this place as their habitat and thus rendering it non accessible by humans.

The suggested development of the forest area here in based on the use of the same landscape style (Classic European formal style) in the area identification and preliminary landscape layout, formal lines, circles, squares, fountains and symmetry are the main concepts for the new development of this area to imitate the style of the garden as one unit and to create this new area as another historical component of the garden, in addition to the keeping of some important trees and the removing of other unimportant ones. The development of the area is suggested to be as follows: 1- For the planting design three approaches are proposed; one is to plant the central area with native Egyptian plant species, two is to plant plants that can thrive under Egyptian conditions so as to attract a larger number of garden visitors and finally is to plant species that already exists in other parts of the garden so as to sustain unity through the hole garden, the proposed ratio of the three kinds of vegetation is 40:40:10 respectively. 2- Scientific buildings are being added in the form of a major building complex which can contain herbarium, library, seed banks and other important botanic garden buildings. 3- The installation of a formal English maze as an entertainment component and to add both aesthetic and functional value to the garden.

The main point here is to emphasize on the native plant species to Egypt, as this is a new approach to Egypt after all because there is no organization or a school that develop or study native plants, so people, scholars, landscape architects and others may see and come in contact to directly native plant species and understand the effect of different combinations of native plants as well as their effect on the local ecology of the community. This is considered to be a reference for any designer or horticulturist who need to understand the concept of native plants use and the concept of image of nature and ecology in Egypt to be a new approach that can be taught in the future in Egyptian Universities.

• Analytical Drawings
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  Antoniadis Garden General Map

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  Antoniadis Garden Area Identification

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  Landscape style gardens

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  New planting design concept

Projective drawings

• Please add four projective sketches/drawings (or montages/schemes) for your case and take the following aspects into account:
  • How would you like this case to change in the near future? (in 1-2 years)
  • And how could it look like in 10-15 years?

• Projective Drawings
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  projective drawing 1

• Yourfilename2.jpg

  projective drawing 2

• Yourfilename3.jpg

  projective drawing 3

• Yourfilename4.jpg

  projective drawing 4

Summary and conclusion

Antoniadis Botanical garden could be in the future the foot hold of Egyptian native plants in display and production, the garden contains a considerate amount of plant species that can be increased by proper installation of plants and a good designing scheme for the garden, the forest area in the southern part could be the ideal place for such expansion. by doing so we will have our first ecological garden to start working on the concept of ecological and native plants garden and explain to locals what are native plants and the benefits and aesthetics of this plants and may be at some time make our own Egyptian landscape style or school instead of imitating foreign styles.

Image Gallery

• Image Gallery
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  Antoniadis Palace

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  English garden

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  Entrance garden

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  Forest area

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  French garden

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  Italian garden

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  Moorish garden

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  Pentagon garden

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  Royal Glasshouse garden

References

Ashraf, A.E.A. (2008). Studies on some Cacti and succulents and Egyptian Botanic Garden Ph.D. Thesis, Faculty of Agriculture, Cairo university, Egypt.

FICSBG (2006). The First International Conference, "Strategy of Botanic Gardens", Guide about Egyptian Botanic Gardens 10-12 May, 2006 Agricultural Museum, Dokki, Giza, Egypt

Hamdy; R.S. , Abd El – Ghani, M.M. , Yossef, T.L. and El- Sayd, M.(2007). The floristic composition of some historical botanical gardens in the metropolitan of Cairo, Egypt. African journal of agricultural research, vol. 2(11): 610-648.

M.G.EL-Torky, Thanaa.M. Ezz, H. F. EL-Tayeb, Abdullah A. A. Arafa (2013). The history and floristic composition of Antoniades Botanical Garden in Alexandria, Egypt (in press).

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