Show garden with an illuminated path and planting
Name

Here a River Once Flowed…

Place · year

Almaty, Kazakhstan · 2025

Type

Landscape · Ecology · Research

Status

Show garden

The linear garden tells the story of changing river ecosystems and the disappearance of Central Asia's tugai forests. It becomes landscape, route, and ecological statement at once.

A sequence of wet, transitional, and degraded fragments shows how changes in the water regime affect biodiversity. Visitors do not observe the story from outside; they move through it bodily, through light, texture, scent, and sound.

The garden does not reproduce nature literally. It translates a scientific subject into an emotional experience and speaks about ecosystem recovery through careful relationships with water and local plant communities.

Dark section of the show garden
The contrast of light and shadow emphasises the fragility of a disappearing ecosystem.
Visitors in the show garden
The route turns ecological information into a lived sequence.
Timber path among the planting
Materials and plants evoke a temporary riverbed left behind by water.