From landfill to landscape in Tel Aviv

Standing before the gates of Tel Aviv is a 60-meter-tall (200-foot-tall), flat-topped hill with a churning, fermenting interior.

For decades, garbage from throughout Israel was piled here. Finally, the land could take no more: The smell became intolerable, and the risk too high that winter floods could sweep the poisonous brew into water supplies.

Hiryia, as the dump was called, was closed.

But the mountain of trash stayed behind - like a monument.

From toxic estate to tropical paradise

Now the smell is gone, and the trash heap is in the midst of a metamorphosis that will turn it into the brand-new Ariel Sharon nature park.

The view of Tel Aviv from "Belvedere" in the Ariel Sharon Park

Nearly a decade ago, Israel's government issued an international invitation to help revitalize the area. Landscape architect Peter Latz' vision impressed the jury: a Mediterranean landscape atop the plateau, a floral terrace cut into the hillside, all surrounded by a naturally untouched riverbed as well as orchards and fields.

Latz, a pioneer in the field, has been working since the 1980s to convert industrial wastelands into "new paradises," as he described it.

Citizens in the highly-populated area can use the roughly 800-hectare-square (3-mile-square) space to bicycle, walk, listen to concerts or play in the water. Species native to Israel - like palms, olives, oaks, carob trees, bushes and herbs like rosemary and thyme - will grow there.

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From landfill to landscape in Tel Aviv