What were your initial impressions of the Kenny Heights project?
The last time I was there, an enormous monitor lizard ran out across the roadway, down the bank and into the water. I’m 6 foot 2, and it was a lot bigger than me! I’ve studied reptiles at London Zoo, and I think it’s fantastic that there is all this wildlife – birds as well as reptiles – on the doorstep. It tells you a lot about the site, and it bodes well that Kenny Heights is devoting more space to landscaping than you would expect in a project like this.

What do you see as the main landscaping issue for such a big and varied site?
It’s important that the whole site is coordinated so it has a feel of being one entity, rather than a fragmented collection of destinations. It’s intended to be a sanctuary after all, and someone needs to keep a handle on that.

How do you plan to incorporate relaxing space in such a huge, developed area?
There are ways of catering for personal space, so people can actually get away while remaining within the site. So, for example, we’re designing some pods out of rugged, natural stone with high walls. You’ll be able to sit in them and barely be seen, even from the highest buildings. I’m also planning to design some relatively small scented and secret gardens within the bigger scheme.

What else can you tell us about your specific landscaping plans?
I like the idea of getting very organic with the winding pathways that will feed out from the buildings. We’re talking about using local stone, nothing too hard, something that blends. On my next trip I’m going to search for sand stones and granites.

The whole place will be very over-planted, making the landscape quite dense, and I’m hoping to obstruct some of the sightlines to the buildings, so that you can forget a bit about where you are. The plants and trees will be indigenous; some of the planting will be quite stylised while other areas will remain wild. We’re also designing a bridge, a causeway made out of natural stone, and we will be planting a jungle behind it. Rather than looking traditional, I’m creating something ultra-modern, very low and oval. This is about wildlife too. Nature really can work with hi-tech, ultra-modern environments, if they’re done in the right way. The idea is that there’ll be a canopy, like a natural rain forest, with some trees three-storeys high. Underneath there will be two or three lower levels of planting and some lawn. I want that all the way round the site so that on day one it will have a natural feel.

Then we’re going to have some funky laser lawn lights to make the grass look as if it’s shimmering. Their impact will be amazing.

What’s your impression of Kuala Lumpur and the way it currently uses outside space?
I’ve worked in hot climates including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Beirut, but this is my first Asian mega-city. It’s such an exciting modern city and it doesn’t suffer from smog. But the traffic is terrible.

In other parts of the world, people have a tradition of using outside space as a leisure destination. This happens a lot in India and Africa, where I get the impression people are more interested in being with nature.

It’s not unusual for public spaces in Asian cities like Singapore and KL to be very open and quite impersonal. Perhaps unsurprisingly these areas are rarely used or embraced by its citizens. What’s more, in KL it’s either very hot or raining. However, I don’t think these reasons fully explain why relaxing in public areas is less of a custom. Maybe the people of KL are spoilt because they’ve got such lush countryside just outside the city.

How do you see open spaces developing in the future for big Asian cities?
At the moment, Asian cities still have these lush surroundings, even if they’re built up. But soon, as the cities grow, they’ll really need outside spaces and greenery.

John Van Hage and his company London Landscape have evolved a form of highly elaborate garden design, taking a route that blends romanticism with elements of both modernist and vernacular architecture. First rising to prominence through a series of gardens created for London’s Chelsea Flower Show – where he was awarded the prestigious gold medal in 1991 – Van Hage’s work incorporates the sculptural as well as the floral, blending interior elements like furniture, sculpture and exterior rooms into gardens that are extravagantly yet meticulously planted. Van Hage makes use of carefully composed colour palettes in his planting, ensuring that vistas reach through architectural devices like arches, pergolas and modernist structures to create a series of frames through which even the most compact garden is given an expansive feel.