Herzen State Pedagogical University is planning a “Green Pelican” educational ecological festival featuring a landscape design competition, inspired by the garden-transformer in Isaakievskaya Square. The festival will encompass lectures, master classes, a natural science project school, and an expert club.

Elena Shtiglits, a researcher at the university, announced these plans during the “Formation of a Comfortable Urban Environment” conference. Students, supported by professionals, are currently working on identifying suitable locations and developing design concepts for the container gardens, with a preliminary map of the university’s container gardening plan already in place.

The university aims to revitalize underutilized spaces, like dull courtyards and parking areas, with greenery. Initial landscaping efforts this year transformed Initiative Square, a central courtyard, with benches and planters filled with juniper, boxwood, and summer blooms.

The “Green Pelican” festival will showcase student landscape projects in the form of exhibition gardens. Shtiglits mentioned that the university could potentially provide these compositions to the city or keep them permanently on campus.

The university’s container gardening initiative is part of a broader three-year development plan adopted in May 2024, which includes building reconstruction, facade renovation, architectural lighting installation, new educational spaces, and cultural heritage site work. The university also has a biological station with a greenhouse farm in Vyritsa, with reconstruction planned to serve as a plant-growing base for the exhibition gardens.

Shtiglits referenced existing landscape festivals in Russia, such as Moscow’s “Gardens and Flowers” and Yekaterinburg’s “Atmosphere,” noting the trend toward long-term gardens, including mobile structures.