There is nothing I like better than a trip to the airport. Usually it means we are about to embark upon another trip, another adventure, another city. But today I went on a different kind of trip to YVR.
Thirty of my closest Master Gardener friends and I boarded a bus at Van Dusen Botanical Gardens along with Randy Sharp of Sharp and Diamond Landscape architecture. Our destination was the Vancouver International Airport.Randy was one of the landscape architects responsible for the enormous beautification and greening of the Vancouver airport and it was a special treat to see the facility through his eyes.
"Arriving at YVR in the 1980s was a very different experience to what it feels like today," Randy stated. Airports have a habit of being large warehouse-like spaces isolated on outlying areas of cities. When this master landscape enhancement project was conceived with the start of Expo and with the Olympics in mind, the architects worked hard to change this old notion of what airports were.
Key to the continuity and flow of the designs are creating a "sense of place," the feeling that you are arriving somewhere very special. With elements of West Coast aboriginal art (seen mostly inside the airport), the entire project tells a story and mirrors elements of West Coast regional landscape and culture along the way. Randy referred to this as "place identity."
On Grant McConachie Way you can see many of the new installations and dramatic transformation of landscape sites; built-up berms with swaths of hardy shrubs and perennials whose broad strokes are visible by air, large tree terraces and visual plantings that mimic the wide arc of flight paths. Using the landscape as a canvas is only the tip of this far-reaching project.
YVR is located within the estuary of the Fraser River on Sea Island. The entire master plan is part and parcel of a large conservation project, which helps to offset the environmental concerns that airports create.
One site that is easy to access and conveniently located just outside the International terminal and the Canada Line station is the living wall or green wall, as they are sometimes referred to.
YVR is the first Canadian airport to have installed a living tapestry, which is just one of many sustainable initiatives and ecological solutions for the airport.
One of the largest living walls in North America, it measures 17 metres high and 11.6 m wide (about 55.8 feet x 38 feet), and includes a total of 27,391 individual plants.
The wall is created from stainless steel components. Panels are pre-vegetated off site and fed by a drip irrigation system. Plant material includes native licorice fern, Japanese euonymus and periwinkle. Just like home gardeners, the panels were created using a trial-and-error system with its materials. Both bergenia and black mondo grass were used, but did not thrive in such extreme conditions and were removed.
Recycled coconut husks hold each plant root in place and there is no soil involved in the entire installation.It weaves a story of colour and hue, and connects the large Canada Line station above, with the ground below to mimic a coastal canyon.
When you look at the wall, there is a distinct visual connection to the land, sea and sky that surround the airport. It creates a natural focal point and becomes one of the gateways that link Vancouver to British Columbia, Canada and the world.
Stay tuned for part two in this series, raptors on the runway.
