Page 8 - Landscape129

PROJECT

green construction and soft landscaping.
In the first instance, this involved paving,
tiling and coping. Paving manufacture took
place in Lusaka, and tiles were supplied
from Johannesburg. They were required to
match those used inside the hotel.
For the putt-putt green construction,
Countryline undertook preparation work
in the form of earthworks, compaction and
brick edging, whilst the artificial turf was Walkway towards the jetty
installed by a sub-contractor.
The third contract, soft landscaping, was
where Countryline worked with Emerald
Green.
Noteworthy points for the landscape
installation were the following:
• Countryline was bound by the rules of
the Mosi National Park where the hotel is
situated, and throughout the duration of
their work, they had to take the elephant
corridor into account;
• it was important for them to minimise
the impact of the landscaping as much
as possible;
• they moved 20 000 cubic metres of
soil onto the site to create mounds for
screening in between the villas, in order The contemporary rim flow pool on the banks of the Zambezi River, designed by Landmark Studios
to give privacy to guests;
• existing trees were retained wherever
possible, as were dead trees which
provide roosting areas for birds;
• rehabilitation took place with a seeding
mix from South Africa; and
• the entire area (25 ha) was scarified, and
seeding was undertaken by hand.

Irrigation
The irrigation system was designed
by Mainline Irrigation and installed by
Countryline. Four submersible pumps,
suspended underneath a jetty floating in
the Zambezi River, pump the river water
through an automatic self-flushing filter
into the water storage facility. From the
storage tank farm, a pump set pumps the The architecture of the main hotel sets the tone for a clean and contemporary landscape
water through one more filter for a final
filtration, and into the irrigation system. An
irrigation decoder controller and central
control system manages over 100 solenoid
valves, thus maximising efficiency and
minimising consumption, whether this is
water or electricity.
The river is the sole source of water for
the project.

Emerald Green
Hodgson says that 60% of the plant material
was obtained in Zambia, with the rest
coming from South Africa. “Zambia only has
a few wholesale nurseries, and very few of
them grow large trees, let alone indigenous
ones. Also, there is a huge shortage of
compost, so we relied on sawdust mixed A watering hole for wildlife

6 Landscape SA • Issue 129 2023