DUBAI // The emirates’s most environmentally friendly hotel opened yesterday – complete with a hanging garden.
The Novotel Dubai Al Barsha also comes equipped with an irrigation and plant feeding system, including the hanging garden wall, which takes up 1,200 square metres and contains about 27,000 plants.
At Sunday’s launch, a number of schoolchildren gathered at the opening of the green hotel for a tour of the garden, which its owners hope will offer the opportunity for other children to learn about environmental issues.
The garden will be maintained by an automatic irrigation system and fertiliser injection pump. The system is unique and provides the required chemicals and fertilisers needed for the plants to survive all year round, Yazan Al Sahnawi, the managing director of Swiss Plus, the company behind the design and construction of the seven-storey hanging garden, said.
“We will also prune the plants on a regular basis to keep the hanging garden looking neat and tidy. During the summer, we expect the plants to grow more and because of the high temperatures we will increase the workings of the irrigation system,” he said.
Phillipe Montaubin, the general manager of the hotel, said: “We would love to see as many people come here to learn what we are trying to achieve with the hanging garden – not just children but adults as well.
“In the last few months we have had so many people taking pictures as the outside of the hotel really stands out. Now we can explain to the public why it has been installed.”
Mitzy Davey, whose child was part of the tour, said: “It is wonderful to see greenery in the city beyond the parks and now as part of the Dubai skyline. My daughter is enthralled by the plants growing down the side of the building, and will definitely start the green conversation in our household.”
Dubai aims to cover one-quarter of the emirate – 38,000 hectares – in green space by 2025. In 2010, the government said it wanted to increase the amount of green space per person from 13sqm to 25sqm.
anwar@thenational.ae
