Ornamental creepers to give smart city Bhubaneswar a new look

Bhubaneswar: Non-flowering trees and under flyover spaces will be decorated with indigenous and other ornamental creepers to give smart city Bhubaneswar a new look and better aesthetics.

This will be undertaken in the Bhubaneswar Development Authority (BDA) and Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) owned parks, road-side spaces and across the city as well.

The creepers that bloom not only serve practical purposes (erosion control, weed suppression etc) in this role but also add great beauty to the landscape. Because they grow so quickly, creepers are ideal for fast and noticeable changes to landscape aesthetic.

Also, since they take up little to no ground space (unless used as ground cover), they are going to be used for adding aesthetic and colourful vegetation to non-flowering trees.

Plantation will be carried out in 11 parks including 5 city-level parks and 6 colony-level parks, in the initial stage. They will be implemented in other parks across the city later this year.

 Creepers will also be planted on roadside trees, with special attention given to creepers which bloom in winter, as it is the major tourist season and Temple City attracts its major tourism footfall during the winter days.

Horticulture and landscape experts working for BDA and BMC have found that the non-flowering plants despite having dense and beautiful foliage could not attract gaze of the visitors to the parks and roadside landscapes.

They said an additional flowering creeper over them could enhance their potential a lot and would be smart, beautiful and full of greenery.

However, emphasis will be on indigenous creepers so that their growth and health would be uniform with minimal monitoring.

The spaces below the flyovers across the nation have attracted the attention of planners, architects and landscape designers and in places like New Delhi even pillars below the Metro Rail lines have found beautifully decorated with green elements near the squares and busy junctions.

“The Temple City, known for its green cover might have some occasional loss due to cyclones but these creepers (both non-flowering and flowering) with their quick growth and artistic leaf and flower arrangements would certainly transform the city parks, flyovers and roadside spaces to provide a new look,” said senior citizen NK Patnaik.

“After the initial phase the creepers would be introduced in all other city-level parks to provide them a new look and aesthetics,” said a BDA official.