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Amidst our urban sprawls of concrete jungles and asphalt deserts — perchance, to sight a grove of kachnars in bloom is like an unbelievable apparition. In the new-age city skylines of glass towers, cuboid concrete boxes, crush of cars and fume-emitting automobiles, the presence of trees is a balm to the city-worn soul. Chandigarh stands apart as a green exception. As one of the few cities in the world with planned landscaping — as famous as its architecture — it’s a far-sighted vision of an Arcadian ‘utopia’ for human settlements. Nearly six decades ago when the layout plan of the city was evolved, its architect-planner Le Corbusier, along with Dr M S Randhawa, bearing in mind the landform, plantation and climate of the site, included landscaping as an integral part of the plan fabric. Green tunnels The road plantations were based on study of movements of sun in relation to direction, scale, size and architecture along avenues. After an analysis, trees were recommended on the basis of their shape, form, foliage, flowering and growth patterns. To minimise glare along the avenues running north-east to south-west, dense foliage evergreen trees like pilkhan and kusum were planted so that they formed "green tunnels". Similarly, the shopping streets were planted with flowering species like amaltas, pink cassia and others to give a colour identity to each sector. All parks, gardens, pedestrian and piazzas, too, had designed tree plantations. In the 1960s, on my first visit to Chandigarh, driving along Jan Marg in the month of March was to savour an unforgettable vista of lilac-laced jacaranda trees on both sides of the grand ceremonial avenue. Behind the rows of the flower-bedecked jacarandas was the secondary plantation of siris trees, marked by their tall, strapping height and light green stems. The combination of vista-defining tall trees at the rear, and the splash of colour of the flowering species in front; focussed the eye towards the distant blue Shivalik hills and sculptural shapes of the Assembly and Secretariat buildings peeping through. Harbingers of spring This plantation scheme has, however, now been replaced by a double rows of chakrasia and tecoma agentia trees, for some reasons. With spring in the air, the harbingers of the season in the City are the seemul trees. Tall, strapping with branches jutting out from the stem, they first shed off all leaves in the cold of January, and then in early February, adorn big bouquets of crimson-coloured flowers. The flowering is so profuse that the ground beneath gets littered with them. A good place to spot them is in Sector 9, close to the Carmel Convent School. The next note in the
symphony are the kachnars dotted along the city parks and the
Leisure Valley. You notice magnificent groves, laden with pink and
mauve blossoms lighting up the adjoining brooding foliage all around.
But the most spectacular display is by the tecoma trees along the Jan
Marg. They first shed off their dusty small leaves and then
metamorphose into radiant yellow bunches of flowers. As the rays of
sun fall on their canopies, they are ablaze like yellow orbs.
Summer spread As spring ripens into summer, one can notice a sprinkling of ‘gold’ on the silver oak trees dotting Chandigarh's landscape. Golden flowers adorn their dark green, feathery leaves. The tall, ramrod trees, even though "poor cousins" of the magnificent deodars on the hills, too have a majesty of their own. But there are other surprises too. While on one hand, the city flowering trees are a riot of pink, lilac and bright red — strangely, some trees are beginning to carpet the pavements below with heavy leaf fall. Is it spring or autumn you begin to wonder? Trees like the pilkhans and the kusums have a peculiar trait of profuse leaf-fall during the month of March. As the old leaves fall, the new leaves begin to sprout on the tree boughs. Tiny, tender new foliage of copper-red colour appears at first, which changes rapidly to pale green, and then to dark green leaves. The closing notes of the splendour of the seasons that began with the seemul trees reaches its crescendo with the golden blaze of amaltas trees along with the scarlet-red canopies of the grand gulmohars. Almost the last ones to flower, before summer is well entrenched are the pink cassias, called java-ki-rani. Unfortunately, over the years there has been such a paradigm shift to planting of only evergreen foliage trees in the city; that barring a few remains of the early splurge, there is little further effort to enhance the richness of flowering species now. Exotic and allergenic? It is often criticised that the flowering trees in Chandigarh are exotic, not native to this region, and therefore fragile. It is believed that they also cause allergies. But according to experts in the PGI, the cause of pollen-triggered allergies is not only because of the flowering trees. All trees, except coniferous, flowering or evergreen, native or exotic; even shrubs and grasses, can cause allergies. The wheat crop during harvesting season is also a major cause. In any case, there are no authoritative studies to prove the link between flowering trees and allergies. Similarly on the issue
of "early mortality" or fragility of flowering trees, the
causes are multi-fold. Widening of roads damaging the roots, lowering
of the city's water table and rising vehicular pollution and
environmental stress are equally to be blamed. Moreover, the flowering
species introduced in the city have been doing so well for years in
the region, that they are fairly acclimatised; and not truly
"exotic."
City tree planting is too sensitive a matter just to be left to the skills of horticulturists, foresters or engineers alone. Urban landscape design is much more than just planting hardy, shade-giving trees in large numbers and enhancing tree canopy cover and hoping for rain gods to do the rest. It is visualising complete urban profile, avenues, vistas, pedestrian and open space detailing, establishing scale; and blending the architectural forms to the characteristics of the trees. The image of the city should be one comprehensive, unified entity of built-form and nature. At present, most of the new urban development authorities, though doing laudable work, leave landscaping to horticulturalists alone, and do not employ professionally qualified landscape architects to play this role. The private builders developing elite townships on the other hand, merely market pretty "golf estates" to seduce investors, that have limited ecological benefits to cities. Chandigarh showed the way forward for a garden city six decades ago. Let it be an exemplar for others to inspire and emulate. Let there be trees for the coming generations of city-dwellers, children and grand-children to play and climb on. — The writer is former Principal of the Chandigarh College of Architecture and co-author of the book: Trees of Chandigarh, & other publications on the city Trees in the Indian tradtition
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In Manu Smriti, the famous Indian treatise written by Manu in 100-200
AD, fines of various degrees were prescribed for felling of fruit and
shady trees. Tree plantation along avenues in gardens and around
temples has been practiced in India from pristine times. Ancient
Indian writings prescribed planting of broad leaved trees of bargad,
gular and peepal along the boundary of villages. Kalidasa the great
romantic poet and playwright of 1600 AD, described a scheme of
flowering trees in his play Raguvansham.
