Noida’s Botanic Garden to be revamped, get lakes, boating facility
Taking leads from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew of the UK, the Botanic Garden, Noida will also establish at least five planned climate controlled gardens at specially identified region of its 164-acre premises.
Denizens of National Capital Region (NCR) will be able to enjoy three large lakes probably by the end of this year as authorities have decided to revamp the Botanic Garden of Indian Republic (BGIR) in Noida’s Sector 38A. Besides, the Botanic Garden, which is under the Union environment ministry, will also have an island and boating facility, officials said.
After the attempts to bring three artificial lakes — around 20, 10 and 5 acres in area — to life failed earlier, the officials said they will now use treated water from the Sewage Treatment Plant (STP) in Sector 50 to stabilise the lakes, and thereafter will develop aquatic life there. The lakes, with a maximum depth of around 25 feet, were constructed at different corners of BGIR in 2013 by Civil Construction Unit (CCU) of the ministry, they said.
Taking leads from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew of the UK, the Botanic Garden, Noida will also establish at least five planned climate controlled gardens — ferneries or fern house, palm conservatory, orchid house and a ginger garden — at specially identified region of its 164-acre premises.
“The major challenge was sandy soil of the Yamuna floodplains where the garden is located, due to which water was not stabilising. Also, the sources of water were a few bore wells which are not enough to fill such huge bodies and it’s also not right to use potable water in such huge amount ,” Sandeep Chauhan, scientist in-charge, BGIR-Noida, said.
Chauhan said that earlier bentonite clay was specially procured from Rajasthan for seepage control. However, it did not work right away, possibly due to lack of water to test, he said.
“Over the period of time, we can now see saccharum or kans grass well spread over the lake area, which indicates that water would stabilise. Once the STP water reaches the lakes, we will observe the stabilisation process for at least two months and then go ahead with developing aqua-flora,” Chauhan said.
Manish K Kandwal, scientist D and grass taxonomist at BGIR, said that once water stabilises and early signs of photo planktons — a primary indicator of life in water — the garden administration will go ahead with sowing some common aquatic plants such as water lilies, lotus, hydrilla, water chestnuts and also some comparatively rare species like acorus calamus (commonly known as sweet leaf), ghorbach and foxnuts.
“Acorus calamus or sweet leaf has lots of medicinal applications, especially in homeopathy and ayurveda. We already have a small lotus pond and will soon develop a nymphoid or floating leaves pond and, sedges and grasses pond, which will augment the collection of BGIR,” Kandwal said.
He said that the final stage will be to add recreational activities like boating in the first two large lakes.