Nanjing Gardens

    Nanjing is one of the four ancient capital cities of China, with a long history and profound cultural heritage. The general history of the city is combined by the history of 350 thousand years human being acting, the history of 2500 years city building, and the history of 1700 years capital founding. Nanjing is also one of the four main cities along the Yangtse River, based on the good natural environment surrounding and unique geography sightseeings distributed with hills, plains, rivers, lakes and wetlands staggeredly.

    Nanjing has been famous for gardening since ancient times. According to textual research, as early as 1500 years ago in Eastern Jin Dynasty, gardening was flourishing there. It can be called the original place of gardening in South Jiangsu. During the years of Jiajing Emperor of Ming Dynasty there were Eight Great Scenes of Jinling, which were deducted to Forty-eight Great Scenes of Jinling of Qing Dynasty. The contemporary gardens of Nanjing have inherited the historic cultures, using the art techniques of modern gardening with the advantages of hills, lakes and rivers, forests and the city. The City has had the unique urban garden green system in which the gardens are spotted reasonably in the city in the way of point-line-plane combination and well matching of large-middling-small gardens.

    Resently, there are 17 Nature Reserves in Nanjing area, which occupy 9.04% of the entire area of Nanjing City. Zhongshan Scenic Spot, one of the Key National Scenic Spots, is located in the main city zone and stretches and occupies more than 30 square kilometers, which combines forests, lakes, historical city wall and cemeteries as one. The greenbelts along the road and the streets inare like green tunnels. Almost hundreds of parks, lawn squares and garden greenland are spread reasonably and ubiquitously.

    In the guideline of the important thought of Three Represents and in the request of the general goal that Nanjing should be built into the modernized center city full of economic energy and rich cultural features and with good living conditions for the people, the government of the city has finalized the working principle of gardening and greening of Nanjing. That is to consolidate the result, focus on the features, increase the quality of green and perfect the system. It has promoted gradually the development of urban gardening and greening of the city. By the end of 2006, there had been 69281.85 hectares green land in the city, among which there are 5503.51 hectares public green. The rate of green land in completed areas gets to 41.3 % and the rate of green coverage is 45.5%. The average public green land for each person gets to 13 square meters and the forest coverage is 20% and it gets to 23% in the suburbs plain area. The green coverage in counties and towns is 32.21 % and it has got 26.22% in small market towns and villages. The urban gardening and greening development is on high and leading level among the capital cities and the main cities of the whole country.

    Nanjing was selected as “the National Garden City” in 1997 and went though the re-approval in 2003. Nanjing Gardens Bureau was chosen as “National Advanced Collectivity in Greening” in 2006.nanjing city was selected as "National monden city of afforist" in 2007.