Lankheet water purification park

A water purification plant, but at the same time a public water park and a nature area: this combination can be found on the Lankheet country estate. This scientific experiment is designed as a poetic water spectacle. The aim of the water purification park is to develop reed lands that purify stream water and at the same time produce biomass for green energy or fuel. Fundamental scientific research is going on for five years on the cleansing of surface water using reed filters.

The water purification is regarded as a blue service and thereby as a new economic support for the country estate. The water of the Buurserbeek is let into the purification park, cleansed, and channelled back into the stream. The water board pays the country estate for its purifying activity. Moreover, by allowing the purified water to flow through an existing but dried out marshy woodland, optimal conditions are created for a natural alder and bird cherry wood.

The project is designed as a water garden. Two approaches have been followed. In the first place, the working of the water purification system and the course of the water in that process have been made as clear as possible. In addition, the designers have deployed a large number of design tools to turn the purification park into a pleasure garden in the tradition of water gardens like the Villa d’Este in Tivoli, Italy. Every link in the water purification machine of the country estate is transformed into a feature of the park.

The layout of the reed fields forms the framework of the water garden. Because one side of several fields has been made slanting for technical reasons, a system of linear and meandering paths results. On the east side a clear-cut boundary is formed by an undulating curved panoramic dike that is both spatial spine and observatory point.

Special features are added to the park to evoke a poetic atmosphere and to provide insight into the system. Head-shaped and bottom-shaped granite blocks, for instance, mark the transition from one reed bed to another. An insect-like object is placed in the middle of the supply stream, which is widened where it enters the purification system. The basis of this object consists of a large old screw pump that is connected with granite elements by means of a steel construction. The Scottish artist Jim Buchanan has designed a water labyrinth at the end of the purification system.

New woods with an enchanting atmosphere will be planted on the country estate. Some of the existing woods on the estate will be accentuated with special bulbous plants and flowering shrubs. New woodland with Taxodium distichum will be planted on wet parts of the estate. A wooden-planked path winds its way between the trees.