Haller Park started out life as the Bamburi cement factory which began quarrying coral limestone to make cement in the 1950s. When quarrying stopped in 1971 the result was an enormous unsightly depression about which the experts said nothing could be done due to the sterile nature and salinity of the earth. The factory owners, however, turned to an optimistic Swiss agronomist, René Haller, who accomplished one of the most remarkable environmental rehabilitation projects anywhere in the world. Part of the process involved the planting of Casuarina trees and subsequent introduction of hundreds of thousands of millipedes that helped convert the infertile sand into soil, able to support the lush tropical forest that now prevails.
