The existing garden at Praça do Império will be redesigned in an intervention signed by the landscape architecture studio ACB and that will have as main objective "resume Cottinelli Telmo's layout, recovering the original 1940 concept"as can be read in the project's descriptive memory. Thus, the current geometry of the flowerbeds, paving and lakes will be maintained, which is based on the original square of the 1940 drawings
In the area of the central tank, the most visible element of this garden, access to it will be improved according to the photographs of the time, Portuguese sidewalk will be laid, and the four sets of trees, also present at the time, will be replanted, "which remained at least until the mid '60s and which will provide shade and greater comfort".
The shields of the district capitals, islands, and overseas provinces, which were installed on the bushes for the National Floriculture Exhibition and the commemoration of the fifth centennial of the death of Prince Henry the Navigator in 1961, will disappear. The change was not consensual, but it was the will of the municipality to remove these elements because they were "outdated"as said the Alderman of Green Spaces, José Sá Fernandes, in 2014. The controversy was such that the City Council was forced to promote a contest of ideas.
ACB's proposal was the winner and was known in 2016. "The proposal therefore attempts to recover the integrity ('inteireza') and depuration ('simplicidade') of the Cottinelli Telmo - Vasco Lacerda Marques project, recovering relationships that were demonstrably produced in the original intervention, namely through the presence of sets of trees at the level of the Fonte da Fonte tank, and proposing the removal of more recent additions that undermine those basic and essential intentions, among others, the 'frame' of lawn and boxwood around the tank and the herbaceous and shrub plantings of four species that once corresponded to the topiary sets of the 'shields of the capitals."
The project also includes the removal of the parking lot of a small parallel crossing to Avenida da Índia, so that the new garden will be attached to this avenue, where in the near future a bicycle path will be installed to connect Cais do Sodré to Algés.
The works in the new garden will be in charge of the company Decoverdi - Plantas e Jardins, and will last four months and will cost about 778 thousand Euros, a value that already includes maintenance for a period of one year after completion of the contract work, according to Público newspaper. The contract between the Chamber and the contractor has been signed, and all that is needed is the approval of the Court of Auditors.
