Mengxi Botanical Garden

Mengxi Botanical Garden

Mengxi Botanical Garden is a national AA-level tourist attraction.

Mengxi Botanical Garden is named after Shen Kuo’s "Dream Pool Essays." The park is located on the south side of the eastern extension of Yingbin Avenue, in the eastern part of the new urban area of Shuyang, covering a total area of 200,000 square meters. Phase I spans 140,000 square meters, including 35,000 square meters of water surface, while Phase II covers 60,000 square meters. It is a comprehensive park integrating sightseeing, leisure, culture, and entertainment. The park highlights Mengxi culture and designs attractions based on seventeen themes recorded in the "Dream Pool Essays," such as movable type printing, scriptures in water, and more.

The botanical garden features a wide variety of plant species, fully showcasing plant diversity. The main arbors include camphor trees, ginkgoes, magnolia grandiflora, cedar, beech, hackberry, metasequoia, and weeping willows, many of which have a diameter at breast height exceeding 25 cm. Flowering shrubs consist of purple leaf plum, red maple, Chinese redbud, crape myrtle, and plum blossoms. Other shrubs include red tip photinia, golden privet, pittosporum, summer azalea, and euonymus fortunei. Additionally, the park is adorned with numerous herbaceous flowers, such as Aster novi-belgii, coreopsis, carpet phlox, and poinsettia, ensuring “flowers bloom in three seasons and greenery all year round.”

The park is divided into five sections based on the five elements. The main gate is designed as a wooden plaza, incorporating the legend of "wood transforming into stone" into the design, complemented by tall arbors. The concept of "tree as body, stone as marrow" is used to reflect both culture and the theme of the element wood. To the south is the fire-themed plaza, mainly highlighted by azaleas, symbolizing the essence of fire through both the plant's association with the fire element and Shen Kuo’s personality. The earth theme introduces movable type printing into the earth-themed plaza, carving historical culture onto it to reflect the simplicity of the people of Shuyang. The metal theme plaza utilizes the "golden ratio" principle, designing various triangular grass slopes from different angles in the center of the plaza, creating visual impact with the surrounding landscape to represent the transformation and continuity of metal. The water theme makes full use of Shen Kuo’s concepts of "flowing water" and "still water" in the park’s waterway design, integrating them with waterfront experiences to emphasize that water is the soul of the entire park.

Being in the park not only allows you to enjoy its natural scenery but also to learn about the knowledge in the "Dream Pool Essays" and experience Mengxi culture—this is the essence of the park.

Attraction Location

South Side of the Eastern Extension of Yingbin Avenue, Shuyang, Suqian City, Jiangsu Province