Use landscape pools to collect rainwater, set up drinking places for birds in the garden, let wild animals take a bath... The Luba residential area of Xinjing Town, Changning District, rationally utilizes rainwater resources, and creates demonstration points and science popularization points for the comprehensive utilization of rainwater in one fell swoop, saving about 600 cubic meters of water per year.
The Luba residential area is composed of commercial housing, relocation housing and public rental housing, with an area of about 200,000 square meters, and was rated as "Shanghai Water Conservation Demonstration Community" in 2018. In recent years, the Lvba residential area has played a role in storing, transferring and infiltrating rainwater runoff, and has continuously integrated the concept of water conservation into the daily life of residents, creating an atmosphere of loving water, cherishing water and protecting water. The rainwater utilization of the six places in the community, "Fish Play Bilian", "Music Workshop for Young and Old", "Hanging Garden", "Habitat Mountain House", "Butterfly Love Flower Stream" and "Still Water Flowing Water" has its own characteristics, forming a "six-in-one" comprehensive utilization of rainwater, and won the second prize of the 2021 Shanghai Rainwater Comprehensive Utilization Case.
1 Fish play with Bilian
The rainwater collected by "Fish Play Bilian" is used for green watering
"Fish Play Bilian" uses the original koi pond to transform into a leisure landscape pool for residents, covering an area of 220 square meters. The property regularly dredges the ponds, collects rainwater during the rainy season for daily water replenishment of the landscape pond fountains, and pumps water directly from the ponds during the greening maintenance season to water the greenery.
Renderings of the transformation of "Fish Play Bilian"
Recently, "Fish Play Bilian" is undergoing leak repair, waterproofing and glass mosaic renovation, and installing purified water facilities. This transformation not only allows the water body to circulate on its own, play an aeration role, give the fish a good natural ecological environment, but also ensure that the pond water is clear all year round.
2 Fun Workshop for young and old
"Fun Place for Young and Old" uses a permeable floor to build a 240-square-meter fitness square, which absorbs rainwater and infiltrates into the ground through a colored permeable floor to facilitate residents' travel activities.
The rainwater seeped down on the "Fun Workshop for Young and Old"
3 Hanging Gardens
The "Hanging Garden" is a 500 m2 rooftop view with ponds, pavilions and various planting areas. It is evergreen all year round, and every corner is full of greenery, which not only opens up new places for people to rest and entertain, but also strengthens the heat insulation effect of the roof.
The garden also collects rainwater from the roof into a pond by laying canals and pipes for birds to drink water and plants to water.
"Hanging Gardens" rainwater utilization
4 Habitat Hill House
The "Habitat Mountain House" in the Leyi Habitat Garden is full of technology content. The antique glass house wrapped in strips of heavy bamboo and wood that is not perishable is now a group activity space in the community where vivid science education can be carried out.
"Habitat Mountain House" rainwater sand rate system
The unique sloped roof design of the mountain house discharges the rainwater to a corner, gathers it in a petal-shaped metal rainwater collector, and the cascade of small waterfalls flows downwards, falls in a wooden box with a four-layer sand and gravel filtration system, and finally flows to the side of the iris pond to become natural water purification, which vividly teaches citizens and teenagers a lesson in water ecology science.
Intelligent atomized irrigation system
The garden is also equipped with a remote intelligent atomization irrigation system to achieve remote soil environmental detection, based on the actual water demand of plants, and with information technology as the means, to improve the accuracy of irrigation and improve the utilization rate of water resources.
5 Butterfly Love Flower Creek
Located in the core area of leyi habitat garden, "Butterfly Love Flower Creek" is a nine-curved dry stream, which is full of animals and plants such as rhododendrons, golden chrysanthemums, fish and shrimp and frogs, which dot the garden and provide a good habitat for various insects.
The surrounding area of "Jiuqu Dry Creek" is full of flowers and plants
A complete set of flowing water systems formed by "Butterfly Love Flower Creek" condenses the design ingenuity of the entire community. During the rainy season, the water meanders out of the Metasequoia forest, forms a triad with the difference in terrain, and finally merges into the "Iris Pond". The collected rainwater feeds the growth needs of animals and plants, thus forming a natural micro-ecological balance.
"Butterfly Love Flower Creek" a scene of "Iris Pond"
6 Still water flows
Located at the southernmost end of the Leyi Habitat Garden, close to the Nanyupu River, it is the core area of the park to protect local animals and plants, and has installed a "still water flow" that includes drinking water for birds, an "eye of nature" that integrates with nature, and an artificial manual pressure pump.
Through the artificial pressurized water pump, the natural river water can be extracted from the south fishing pool on the side. The river is filtered by multiple channels of sand and gravel to achieve a purification effect, and then passes through the "Eye of Nature" flower wall to form a very interesting waterfall landscape. The pumped water crosses the dry creek and pools in the "Iris Pond". In times of drought, water is automatically raised to replenish the flowers and grasses in the dry creek; on rainy days, the water level rises to a certain height, and the South Yupu is discharged.
Leyi Habitat Garden is precisely because of the rain pool next to the "Habitat Mountain House" in the community, the animal safety passage provided by the "Butterfly Love Flower Creek", and the manual river water irrigation supplement, a wild animal called the "Raccoon" of Yiqiu, a family of three, who used this small rain pool as their family's night bathing pool, and came to patronize it every night.
The image comes from the Luba residential area of Xinjing Town
Text: Cheng Qinghui
Editor: Li Bingqian