A landscape design institute in Suzhou, east China's Jiangsu Province, is to send a delegation of experts to help build the largest overseas Chinese garden next month in the United States.

The project at the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens, east of Los Angeles, got under way in early 2004.

US workers are responsible for the concrete part of the traditional garden, while Chinese craftsmen will carry out decoration and sculpturing.

The group from Suzhou, a city known for its beautiful gardens, were invited by project leaders to help finish the first phase of the 12-acre garden, including the decoration of a man-made lake and its surrounding areas, according to Lu Hongren, a general engineer at Suzhou Landscape Architecture and Design Institute.

"The craftsmen all obtained their cultural exchange visas earlier this month and are preparing to begin their journey," said Lu.

In order to use the most authentic Suzhou craftsmanship for the garden, the materials needed, including 650-ton lake stones and thousands of pieces of wood and stone sculptures, were chiseled in Suzhou and sent to the US in 52 containers last month. 

The craftsmen plan to spend 10 weeks assembling the pieces around the man-made lake at the site, Lu said.

According to Xie Aihua, chief designer with the institute, all the scenes in the Chinese garden will be given idyllic Chinese names to provide an authentic flavor.

The site will encompass four gardens named after the four seasons, and five special collection gardens, which will all be linked by pavilions and winding pathways.

Each of the four seasonal gardens will have plants to reflect the different periods of the year: peach trees for spring, lotus for summer, osmanthus for autumn and plum blossoms for winter.

"At its completion, the Huntington Chinese Garden will be the largest classical Chinese garden outside of China," according to June Li, curator of the garden.

US immigration officials initially denied visas to the Suzhou designers last September because they did not consider the project an important cultural exchange programme, but they reversed their decision in January after appeals from the Huntington side.

"We would have had to halt the project if we couldn't get the skilled Suzhou workers here, because we didn't want to sacrifice the structures' authentic craftsmanship," Steven Koblik, President of the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens, was quoted by AFP as saying.

(China Daily February 14, 2006)