Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Let's plant a neem here

Mantri's landscape architect appears to have a penchant for ornamental trees. They make good picture postcards, but do precious little for end-users - Mantri residents. We would favour species that give shade, reduce environment damage being done by our AC units (1,500, when all 700 plus apartments get occupied) and trees that bear fruits attracting birds to our complex.
Our landscape people, I notice, have replaced, in the last few weeks, one set of fancy trees with another at our front lawn, where we have some chehal-pehal in the evenings. Elders are out here on the lawns for some fresh air and social chit-chat, and children run about in the lawn. I would suggest Mantri consider relocating the children's play area to the front lawn (from its current location close to the gas bank near the Clubhouse).
This was the picture of our front lawn in May. These trees have since been replaced with another set of trees. The shot (below was taken this morning - Sept. 21
My humble submission is that the Mantri landscape people should try out something different - say, a neem, mango or jackfruit - at the unplanted pit in the picture.
We would be happy to plant a sapling here as part of our community tree-planting programme. A neem should fit in nicely here. And, if I have a say in this,I would dedicate the neem we plant here to the first Occupant of the Mantri complex - Mr Nambiar of G block.

2 comments:

  1. I would agree whole-heartedly with Mr Krishnan's post above. More than fruit trees, I would also like to see more shade trees as there is precious little shade at the present in our campus!

    Also I feel that the front lawn would be a very nice place to have the children's play area as this is where everyone normally congregates in the evening. What better way to keep an eye on our young ones.

    Instead of having two gazebos, I feel one would be sufficient and the other (suggest the one nearer the fountain) one be replaced with a beautiful play area for the kids. Why do we need to tuck the little ones away in a corner of our campus? After all Mantri Synergy stands for synergised community living - and aren't our little ones an integral part of our community?

    Regards,

    Anu

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  2. We agree that some more thought and care could go into tree-planting at MS.

    The choice of location and type of trees / plants should be thought out with a longer-term perspective in mind.

    Shade providing, dust screening, dash of fragrance and colour, fast-growing, strong enough to resist damage, adaptable enough to grow with minimum maintenance and watering, longer life, insect-resistant,… the list of attributes to be taken care off is indeed long but can be achieved with a focused approach to this common cause.

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