A former teacher in the Chinese province of Guangdong is making excellent use of his retirement. He’s not just gardening, but building entire scale maps out of shrubs. As featured on Atlas Obscura, Cai Mingxing’s terrace is entirely devoted to a map of China carved out of the garden.
The terrestrial cartography uses tiles to indicate international and national borders, shaping the garden into all of the Chinese provinces with small red-and-white signs denoting each province. Even the islands in the South China Sea have their own planters in the garden’s pool, and there are basic outlines of Mongolia and the Korean peninsula.
The terrace map, more than 30 feet wide, took the 75-year-old retiree a full year to build. Judging by the pictures, his project is really blooming now.
BestChinaNews has more pictures for your perusal.
[h/t Atlas Obscura]
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September 22, 2016 – 1:00am