To save age-old trees, NDMC gardeners to study in Singapore

In a first, the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) will send its gardeners to Singapore to study arboriculture – the cultivation, management and study of individual

In a first, the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) will send its gardeners to Singapore to study arboriculture – the cultivation, management and study of individual trees, shrubs and vines.

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According to NDMC officials, the visit will help the gardeners in the city learn about advanced technologies to protect heritage trees in Lutyens’ Delhi that are almost a century old and are in dire need of conservation.

S Chellaiah, director (horticulture) NDMC, said that this would be for the first time that their gardeners would be travelling abroad for advanced training aimed at maintenance and conservation of ageing and heritage trees.

“Two batches of 10 gardeners each will be sent to the Centre for Urban Greenery and Ecology (CUGE) in Singapore to study rejuvenation of trees techniques through arboriculture. It will be at least a week-long training session where they will learn to assess the health of over 100-year-old trees, more advanced ways to understand soil compaction and then treat and conserve such trees accordingly,” Chellaiah added.

He added that the gardeners will be sent to Singapore tentatively in June-July by when the threat of coronavirus is likely to subside. A proposal on the visit has been sent for the approval to the NDMC chief.

He further said that currently there were around 15,000 indigenous trees that are almost a century old and need more advanced care and conservation. These indigenous tree species such as Neem, Peepal, Pilkhan, Jamun, Arjun, Khirni, Imli among others were planted in the NDMC area when British architect Edwin Landseer Lutyens was entrusted with the task to plan New Delhi in 1911.

Chellaiah said that in the last few years several 100-year-old trees — mostly Neem, Peepal and Pilkhan trees – have uprooted due to concretisation, soil compaction and ageing in the NDMC areas.

“We are losing 100-year-old trees — Pilkhan trees on Zakir Hussain Road, Neem trees on Abdul Kalam Road and Prithvi Raj Road, respectively. This is because of concretisation, ageing, termite and type of soil (sandy gravel soil). We have to adopt advanced methods to deal with such situations and train the staff for tailor-made solutions. The trained staff will get to know how shallow the particular tree has become and then it will be treated accordingly,” he said.

Another NDMC official said that to keep these old trees alive for another 50-60 years, advanced techniques and tailor made solutions would have to be adopted for conservation.

Prof C R Babu, professor emeritus at the Centre for Environment Management of Degraded Ecosystems at Delhi University, said, since Delhi has a different climate and flora, it will be better if the teams are trained here and particularly in trees that are native to the city. “It is true that the West and other countries have a better training in arboriculture. But since the type of flora is totally different with Singapore having typical rainforest ecosystem with high rainfall and moderate temperatures throughout the year , trees in Delhi grow under semi-arid conditions and face extremes of temperature, it is better that the training is conducted by team of experts here itself,” said Babu.