Openplants: Trees on Partially Enclosed Rooftop Gardens

Raffles City Chongqing (China) just opened its glass-bottom sky bridge recently. From up there, visitors could see the Yangtze River's brown merging with Jialing River’s blue below their feet. This sky bridge, named Exploration Deck or The Crystal (not sure which) is 300m in length, 32.5m in width and 26.5m high. Tickets to the Exploration Deck are priced at RMB180 (about S$36). The Crystal has 120 trees, which they think would grow to about 9m tall when they have matured.

Developer: CapitaLand
Architects: Safdie Architects, P & T Group International Ltd.
Landscape Consultant: WAA

An exterior view of Raffles City Chongqing. The sky bridge is nestled atop four 250m tall skyscrapers and linked to two adjacent skyscrapers by cantilever bridges.

Image credit: CapitaLand

The glass-bottom sky bridge is the highest of its kind across Western China. Note that trees at either ends of the sky bridge are the only ones fully exposed to sunlight.

Image credit: CapitaLand

This tree is presumably somewhere near the middle of the sky bridge. Does not seem to receive any light other than the artificial light supplied by the spotlight.

Image credit: CapitaLand

Trees within enclosure looking low in foliage.

Image credit: CapitaLand

Trees at one end of the sky bridge, which is (relatively) fully exposed to sunlight.

Image credit: CapitaLand

Coming back to Singapore at Orchard Central. There are two levels of rooftop gardens, one of which is at level 11, where some restaurants are. At one small corner, there was a tree at an "air well" but I suppose it did not do well, presumably due to the lack of sunlight.

Tree pointed with red arrow from the view within a restaurant.

Photo taken in Oct 2013.

The tree and the "forest floor" landscaping are gone. Replaced with semi-shade tolerant plants such as Dracaena cambodiana, Tabernaemontana corymbosa (variegated), Spathiphyllum wallisii, and Syngonium (variegated). Photo taken in Jan 2020.