Plant Community Design Approaches for Fragmented Green Space Habitats in Northwest China Arid Cities

The green space habitats established in northwest China arid cities are known for the main features of fragmentation, large scale, small size, and habitat diversification. However, they are designed in simple ways, which result in heavy waste of the green space and habitat resources. It is urgent to find proper ways of ecological design. This thesis takes the design practice of two habitat gardens in Xi’an University of Architecture and Technology as an example, and puts forward the design model of “site-habitat design + ground cover community” with 1m × 1m as the basic scale unit. In the “site-habitat design”, it takes light and water as the dominant factors to classify the habitat types, and optimize the habitat conditions in site design. In the “ground cover community” design, it follows the diverse prototypes of natural grassland communities in northwest China, along with the basic models of eight kinds of community designs, to create diverse, dynamic landscape of urban plant communities, reduce management and maintenance costs, and improve the ecological efficiency and sustainability of the communities.