ANTALYA, Turkey

Eight days are left until EXPO 2016 Antalya, one of the most important horticultural exhibitions in the world, opens its doors to tourists from Turkey and abroad.

On April 22, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will participate the opening ceremony of exhibition themed ‘Flowers and Children’, in the southern Turkish province, on the coasts of Mediterranean Sea.

More than 40 countries are expected to participate in the EXPO, which will run for six months from April to October, on a 112-hectare exhibition site.

There are several ambitious gardens inside the exhibition site, including a 3,150 square meter Chinese garden called ‘Moon’s Jewel’ and a 1,200 square meter Japanese garden.

China and Japan are two countries with some of the oldest gardening cultures in the world. Chinese garden project manager Meng Qian Wang said China had a horticultural history more than 4,000 years old.

A 30-member staff from China worked for three months to complete the second-biggest garden of the exhibition, after that of Nepal.

Meng Qian Wang said that the garden to be exhibited in Antalya took its inspiration from gardens of Suzhou, one of the country’s oldest cities, known as China’s Venice.

He said an important part of Suzhou city, in the Jiangsu Province of eastern China (about 100 kilometers [62 miles] northwest of Shanghai), is under water. The city is located in the Yangtze River Valley and on the shores of Lake Tai.

“We planted pure Chinese plants in this garden,” Meng Qian Wang told Anadolu Agency, adding that another important aspect of Chinese gardens is being big in surface.

He said that rooms in the garden had roofs inspired by bird wings, prepared in China and transported to Turkey.

The Japanese garden’s project manager Takeo Fujimoto told Anadolu Agency that the garden they started in Oct. 2015 will be ready next week.

Fujimoto said they tried to replicate Japan’s nature in the garden: “We created rocks, green areas and waterfalls specific to Japan,” he said.

His team created artworks and lighthouses with bamboo trees that came from Japan. To symbolize Turkish-Japan friendship, he said they had used flowers grown in Turkey.

Fujimoto said the sakura tree was one of the key components in Japanese gardens.

“Sakura is a kind of a cherry trees that bear no fruits. This tree symbolizes the start of life, in other words the spring, as well as the inevitable end.”

Organizers expect that millions of tourists from both Turkey and abroad will visit the gardens and enjoy cultural and artistic activities of EXPO 2016 Antalya, in which national and international congresses, panels, meetings and seminars will be also organized.