As the world celebrates May as ‘Gift from Gardens’ month, here’s looking a how Delhi has adopted a different method of gardening and how you can make your own garden in your homes.
Delhi has been choking for pure and fresh air to breathe. Over the last few years, excessive construction and overburdening of vehicles on the roads have led to Delhi NCR becoming one of the most polluted regions in the world. Thus, looking out for new and innovative methods is the need of the hour.
Keeping this in mind, the Horticulture Department of the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) has begun the development and expansion of vertical gardens in the city with its debut dated almost a year and a half back.
If you have looked around while your travel on the city, you must have found this beautiful plush of greenery wrapped around the pillars of Delhi Metro Network or beautifying the stretch of the new Yamuna Expressway.
Cities worldwide not only are facing the concern of pollution and warming but also space congestion. In a scenario like this, vertical gardens or “living walls” as they are called, have come out as a blessing for they cancel out all of these issues. Massive construction has led to considerable damage to the green spaces in the city. These vertical gardens not only occupy any landscape at all, but are cost-effective, too, as they are cheap to develop and maintain with plants like Asparagus, Jade plant, Syngonium, etc. and are seasonally grown in plastic containers.
This is what the NDMC is doing to enhance the quality of the air of the city and add to its greenery. But there’s a lot more that people themselves can do in their individual capacity.
Rooftop gardening is one of them. Space crunch in the city restricts people from owning gardens but they can always develop one on their own roofs. Due to excessive heat in the summers, the variety becomes limited but plants like Water Lilies, among others, grow well despite the temperature.
Gardens, apart from purifying the air, also give relaxation from the intolerable heat. The various products they provide are just an added bonus.
There’s no reason why you shouldn’t celebrate this month by doing your bit in developing a garden of your own!
Image Credits: India Times
Shreya Agrawal