Editorial
Drooping Baldha Garden
A test-case for our love of trees
BALDHA Garden no longer throbs with life, as it used to in the past with a delightful array of exotic plants and trees. Unplanned expansion of the concrete jungle around the garden leaves it with little air and even less sunlight -- the two vitally important elements for its survival. There are billboards and high rises all around it casting ominous shadows on the century-old garden -- a botanical wonder.
The garden which has attracted plant lovers and students of botany over the years is showing all the signs of an abandoned or neglected place, where the trees and plants are left on their own to ward off pollution and human excesses. The zamindar, who had the ingenious idea of collecting rare plants and trees from almost all the continents, really accomplished a splendid job. Unfortunately, the great work is being botched up by those in charge of looking after the garden. What is really not comprehensible is that even today, when the garden is wilting and paling, there is no separate budgetary allocation for it. The worries of tree lovers and botanists are clearly not reflected in the way the garden is managed.
The National Botanical Garden authorities are reported to have sent a letter to the DCC to dismantle the billboards that deprive the garden of sunlight. It is not known how the DCC will respond to the letter. But lack of understanding and planning is visible everywhere. Else, the billboards would not have been erected, in the first place. Evidently, it took a long time for the decision makers to realise that Baldha Garden was a treasure that should not be wasted.
Now, the DCC has to deal with the issue with speed and alacrity. The billboards, which threaten the very existence of a hundred year old beautiful garden, which can be a heritage site too, must be brought down immediately. At the same time, the garden managers have to perform better to stop waterlogging, which does not appear to be an insurmountable problem.
Baldha Garden is one of the many examples of beautiful things or places being destroyed due to utter negligence and lack of planning on the part of the government agencies concerned. We hope the Baldha plants and trees will not be allowed to droop and rot, rather there will be some determined and sincere efforts to save them.
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