Episode: 4
Title: Central Park- Living Wall
Broadcast: 9 April 2016
Presenter: Nigel Ruck

Nigel looks at 1 Central Park in Sydney, recently voted the world’s best tallest building, this truly incredible building is home to the world’s tallest vertical garden.

• The building is a collaboration of architects Atelliers Jean Nouvel and PTW with the vertical gardens designed by French botanist Patrick Blanc.
• It’s located on an old industrial site the former home of the Carlton & United brewery and is part of the huge Central Park, $2 billion urban development program.
• Vertical gardens is one of the most popular trends in gardening today and this building is an exceptional example. The 1200 square meter vertical garden design includes 23 green walls with 350 different species, 38,000 green wall indigenous and exotic plants and a total of 85,000 plants that create the eastern and northern facades.
• Species include varieties of red, pink and purple bougainvillea, dwarf bottlebrushes, with deep-red flowers.
• There is no soil involved in this master piece, the plants are grown hydroponically in polyethylene, plastic planter boxes, 5,500 of them that surround every level of the East and West Towers and five levels of the retail podium.
• There is a staggering 15km of stainless steel cables on the two towers for the climbers to grow up these are tensioned by 2,100 stainless steel springs. To complete the magical effect is 2,486 glass façade panels on the East Tower and 820 glass façade panels on West Tower.
• This cantilevered section hovering 29 floors above is home to the sky garden and the towers most luxurious penthouses. Mirrors above are the heliostat and are motorised to send reflective light down onto the gardens below. Without them this northern tower would be in shade without light.
• The building is sustainable and recycled water is used for irrigation.
• All these species are suitable for vertical gardens used in small urban space. This is a marvel of architecture and is the ultimate green wall building today.