It's not your average garden.
In what is being claimed a world first by the Ports of Auckland, the large soil-based vertical garden has been installed on the exterior of its new car handling building.
"This hasn't been done anywhere else," according to Matt Ball from the Ports of Auckland.
"As far as I know, nowhere inside a port boundary in the world that has this sort of feature."
The mastermind behind the design is New Zealand company Hanging Gardens.
"Nowhere has a soil-based garden been done like this," says Leigh Nicholson, the company's managing director.
"The rest of the big structure gardens that you see around the world are hydroponic, meaning that they are planted in an inert medium, no soil. And then the water is fed 24/7 on controllers monitoring the nutrients, pumping the water around."
The facility will temporarily house imported vehicles before they are moved off site.
"Forecasts are we will get upwards of 400,000 cars over the next 10 to 25 years," says Mr Ball.
"We could've built just a really big ugly square box but we wanted to do something different to this building."
The hanging gardens were constructed by prisoners at Paremoremo Prison in Auckland, over eight months.
Everything used in the design can be either re-used or recycled.
"They are using stainless components - anything from stainless wire to using milling machines and assembly of those components to construct the hanging gardens," says Clint Eva, an instructor at Paremoremo Prison.
"The men in our care just have embraced it, actually. They can learn lots of skills from their time in the workshop here and it's really positive. It's good therapy for them."
Built into the structure is a sensor controlled irrigation system to water around 3800 plants, mainly New Zealand natives from Pukekohe-based Joy Plants.
It's the first time vegetation like this has been allowed inside a New Zealand port, and special bio-security measures were required.
They were approved by MPI and include the use of plants that don’t attract insects and other pests, as well as a comprehensive surveillance programme.
"Each pocket has a little dripper above it. So for about two minutes a day, we just drip into each pocket and that is sufficient for the plants to survive and thrive," says Ms Nicholson.
"At the moment what you can see now is you can see some gaps. You can see some holes but in three to six months that's going to fill out and cover up."
A light sculpture will also be added in the coming months to light up the building, and eventually the rooftop will be a public park.
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