Your city can become a garden city like Bengaluru if it were to adopt the concept of ‘serial blossoming’. ‘Serial blossoming’ means there is at least one tree that is in bloom during each season of the year. Urban planners can plant carefully selected native flowering trees that will keep the city in perpetual bloom.
Every city has a green cover. What needs to be done now is to add color to the landscape by planting sequentially flowering trees in the gaps and spots during this monsoon’s plantation drive. Once it adopts the concept of serial blossoming, your city too can transform itself into a garden city in a few years.
Bengaluru’s overlapping flower seasons are no coincidence. It is the result of careful horticultural planning. Gustav Hermann Krumbiegel, a German botanist and garden designer, introduced the concept of serial blossoming in the early 20th century in the then Kingdom of Mysore.
SG Neginhal, an Indian forest official, created the green cover of Bengaluru. Neginhal’s team of volunteers planted more than 15 lakh trees in the city over a span of five years in the 1980s. The tree-lined avenues and boulevards of the Garden City of Bengaluru are his legacy.
Centuries ago, Ritusamhara(Garland of Seasons), Kalidasa’s Sanskrit poem, celebrated the six seasons of the year with lyrical descriptions of around 40 native flowering plants. Bengaluru is a living example of Ritusamhara’s seasonal blooms. What is stopping your city from becoming a garland of seasons?
WHAT CAN YOU DO DURING THIS MONSOON?
1. Transform your house, apartment, and neighborhood streets into a garden! Plant native or naturalised flowering tree saplings during the monsoons in suitable gaps and spots around your house, apartment, and in your lane.
2. Request your local authority to adopt the concept of serial blossoming. Write to your local councillor, MLA and MP, urging them to pursue this idea with the administration.
