Naturally green
You don’t need planners to create green spaces if you truly love green

By Meha Mathur
I took a break from the magazine in June and spent a weekend in Mandu in Madhya Pradesh. It was a strange choice to make. First, because anyone who can afford it, would rather go to the cooler climes of Europe or America, or at least to some exotic location in the Himalayas. Second, summers is certainly not the month for MP. But the Rain God was kind and monsoon arrived in Madhya Pradesh the day I landed, earlier than scheduled. I could capture the clouds that had enveloped the hills around Mandu on Day One of monsoon there. Even when, as a child, I had lived close to Mandu, I had never before had the opportunity to see the ‘city of joy’ during monsoons, which is the ideal season to visit the place.

But before I took the break, I had to finish a few assignments. One assignment was an interview with a town planner-turned garden designer, an enterprising and hard-working lady who has got some big contracts to beautify the city of Delhi. There she was, in the sweltering heat, on a South Delhi plot, arranging palms for the final presentation in the evening. The authorities who were to visit the site had set stringent specifications for the plant size and type: Plant X, to have at least 40 leaves, and to be at least five feet high. Plant Y, to have at least 30 leaves, and to have this much height. Not just that. The soil and roots should not be visible. They should be completely covered with tiny ‘volcanic’ balls. The pitcher type was also prescribed. So was it also specified that the green arrangement should change periodically. Here was this enthusiastic designer, arranging the plants to meet the specifications. Plants which had been procured from as far as Kolkata, transported in special trucks, and being selected or rejected to adhere to size and number-of-leaves specification.

Will this anaemic approach to greening a city actually work? I think not. How can we ration greenery? How can we not think of abundance when we plan to go green?

My belief was only strengthened when I visited Mandu soon after this visit. Untamed greenery, untouched by landscaping bug, is what we got to see — trees 100s of years old, with stems as wide in diameter as our living room, with no cement around them to suffocate their growth. Interesting shapes, most gorgeous colours. Each tree an art piece, each tree a treat to eye.

Here was nature at work, creating the most interesting landscape, unhindered by any approval, costing or space availability issues. It made me ache for similar lushness within my city. Who needs a landscape designer’s services for a manicured nature when what we can actually get is such abundant beauty? Who needs specification about plant size and pitcher size and those 40 leaves, when the objective can be better fulfilled by one sapling?

My small garden has been overtaken by wild grass. I didn't have the heart to weed it away, with the result that the flowering plants got totally overshadowed. Today I tried to pluck out the grass. Immediately, there was a ruckus. Elders and kids reproached me for ruining the greenery. The youngest of the family, aged eight, picked up the uprooted grass and ran back to his room, to keep it as a memorabilia. Immediately I realised I had done the damage. The garden was looking only half as lush with the grass gone. But part of me was thrilled. Without my knowing it, a green brigade has taken roots at my place. When did it happen?

—The author is the Executive editor of Management Compass and Career Choices