14 April to 09 October 2022
AIPH approved category A1 World Horticultural Expo for Expo 2022 Floriade Almere at the AIPH 2009 Spring Meeting in Chinese Taipei.
COUNTRY: Netherlands
HOST CITY: Almere, Amsterdam
EXPO LOCATION: Zuidoever Weerwater, in the centre of Almere
PARK SIZE: 60.4 hectares
THEME: Growing Green Cities
Floriade’s Expo park is in the middle of Almere city, in the Flevoland Polder, on a site uniquely called the “Green Heart”, a large green and natural area within the Randstad circle. You can read more in an AIPH Green City case study. The land here is part of a reclamation project from Lake IJssel to supply housing for the urban expansion of Amsterdam and the Randstad area in the 1970s.
Expo 2022 Floriade sought to share horticultural wisdom on the importance of healthy living and working environments in cities for the future and to spread horticultural knowledge worldwide.
One of the main features of the Floriade was the Green City Arboretum, planned by famous Dutch architect Winy Maas into an 800 by 800 metres square grid and placed on top of existing features such as woodland, water, an island, and the highway.
Famed landscape designer Niek Roozen from the Netherlands put his signature upon a bold planting scheme here, with a botanical collection containing 3,000 trees, 90,000 shrubs and 200,000 perennials planted alphabetically. These will remain the Expo 2022 Floriade’s legacy as part of the urban district ‘Hortus’, which will provide homes for a predicted increase in population from 215,000 to 300,000 in ten years.
An essential part of Floriade was the gardens and pavilions built by the Expo participants.
Floriade had four main sub-themes, and the participants were asked to focus on one or more of the following criteria:
Greening the City
▪ solutions to make cities greener
▪ less water passing through the paving
▪ nature inclusive & climate adaptive: green roofs, facades or walls;
Feeding the City
▪ solutions in the field of future/experimental agriculture and horticulture;
Healthying the City
▪ improve air quality, and humidity (indoors) with greenery
▪ quiet and relaxing places
▪ places to meet in the green
▪ relationship with people and health of indoor green and outdoor green
▪ solutions for clean water, air and soil for mental and physical
Energising the City
▪ new solutions for generating, storing and saving energy
▪ water; collection, reuse, purification (possibly with the help of plants).
The following feature some of the participants and how they interpreted Floriade’s themes:
