Dubai Parks and Resorts imports 300 year-old olive trees from Italy for landscaping

Dubai Parks and Resorts, the company developing the massive theme park project in Jebel Ali, said that it has imported 14 eight-metre tall olive trees ranging between the ages of 200 and 300 years from Italy to landscape its flagship project.

Sourced from various plantations in Tuscany as well as the South of Italy, the trees will now be planted in the Hollywood-themed park – motiongate Dubai, a statement said.

Dubai Parks said that it has acquired 15,860 trees, 6,100 palms and over 1.4 million shrubs and groundcovers to landscape the project.

More than 376 different plant species have been sourced locally, as well as from Spain, Italy, Thailand, India and China.

Over 350 Washingtonia palms have already been planted with over 3,650 being tended to in the nursery, the company stated. In addition, different sizes of the red flowering Delonix tree with heights ranging from nearly 1.8 meters to eight metres will dot the grounds.

The project will also have a nursery that stretches over two million square feet and will have the capacity to house over 15,000 trees and palms and more than 900,000 shrubs and groundcovers. The nursery will include four greenhouses with a capacity of more than 100,000 pots each.

Launched in 2012, the Dhs 10bn Dubai Parks and Resorts development is on track to open in 2016, officials have confirmed. The project will consist of three major parks: Hollywood-themed motiongate Dubai, Legoland Dubai and Bollywood Parks Dubai along with Riverland, a grand entrance plaza and Lapita, a family themed hotel.

The development is expected to attract nearly 6.7 million ticketed visitors during its first 12 months in operations and will create about 5,000 jobs across the economy.

Dubai Parks, which is listed in the emirate’s bourse, also forecast that it will earn revenues worth Dhs 2.4bn in its first year of operations.