Archive record · Species proposal · 2000s · Hong Kong
This record rebuilds a species proposal recovered from a legacy presentation in the company files: Proposed Ornamental Grasses for Hong Kong Disneyland, prepared under the Birkdale International name. Grasses read as movement and light in a landscape, and this palette set out how that effect would be produced for a theme park, from nursery rows the team controlled across the border in Zhuhai.
The proposed palette
- Plume grasses for scale: Miscanthus sinensis with its cultivars Zebrinus and Variegatus, Miscanthus sacchariflorus, the pampas selection Cortaderia selloana Pumila, and the giant reed grass Saccharum arundinaceum.
- Fine workhorse textures: side oats grama, Bouteloua curtipendula, and weeping lovegrass, Eragrostis curvula, listed alongside red top grass, Agrostis palustris.
- Waterside verticals: the narrow leafed cattail Typha angustifolia, and vetiver, Vetiveria zizanioides.
- Aromatic and strap leafed: lemon grass, Cymbopogon citratus, with the flax lily Dianella ensifolia rounding out the list.
Grown at the Zhuhai nursery
The proposal was not a paper exercise. The same deck photographs companion strap leafed stock, Lomandra longifolia and Dietes grandiflora, standing in rows at the Birkdale Zhuhai nursery, the production base behind the team's Hong Kong and Macau work. Proposing a palette you already grow, close to the project, is what turns a plant list into a supply commitment.
Why this record matters
Ornamental grasses are now a signature of contemporary landscape design, but proposing them for a theme park took nursery knowledge: which species could be produced in number, to schedule, in the local climate. That is species intelligence, and it worked hand in hand with the engineered ground documented in our companion record, nine kilometres of berms.
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