More than 80 percent of the construction of the 2014's International Horticultural Exposition in East China's Shandong province is already completed, and all work will be done in October 2013, a senior official responsible for the exposition said on Monday.

Emblem of the International Horticultural Exposition in Qingdao, East China's Shandong province. [Photo/provided to China Daily]

The International Horticultural Exposition will be in Qingdao, a harbor city in the province, from April 25 to Oct 25, 2014, and all pavilions and gardening are currently under construction, Li Fengli , who is in charge of the exposition planning, said at a news conference Monday.

"The gardening of the exposition will import foreign plants and flowers besides nationwide species, mainly covering arbors and hydrophytes," Li said. "Now, 85 countries have confirmed they will come to do exhibitions, and 52 of them have handed in their designs."

The exposition, which will be on a hill, will show the harbor city's landform and seascapes, he said. "Besides, we'll pay more attention on spreading our traditional culture via the international platform because Shandong is the birthplace of Confucius," he added.

At Monday's news conference, the organizers also unveiled the exposition's emblem and mascot.

Chen Nan, designer of the emblem from the Academy of Arts and Design at Tsinghua University, told China Daily that the inspiration of the emblem is a traditional Chinese character, which shows a man planting a tree.

"The character means ‘art' and also represents gardening in ancient times. That's why I chose it as the emblem's main part," Chen said, pointing to his work and adding he did dozens of earlier drafts .

Qing Qing, the exposition's mascot, is a sea fairy with a light-blue body. Wu Guanying, the mascot's designer, also from the same academy of the university, painted clouds on its body, hoping to show beautiful scenery of Qingdao.

" ‘Sea' is the first word when people mention the city, so I used the blue color, aiming to provide visitors with a vivid image of a seashore city," he said.

In addition, the topic of the exposition is ‘From the Earth, for the Earth', which was also his idea for the design, he said. "I used to paint a sea bird or flower, but I think the sea fairy is the most suitable to the topic after considering water is the source of all things," he added.

Previously, Kunming, of Yunnan province, Shenyang, of Liaoning province, and Xi'an, of Shaanxi province, had such expositions, which showed developments of Chinese economy, culture and technology.