Urban landscaping with root balled trees a green-wash?

Any national level project focusing environmental improvements through tree plantation should be based on increasing the total tree cover of the country at national level rather than shifting trees from one place to another as currently practiced through root balling methods for our urban landscaping programs. This root balling process also damages the environment of the original location as well, because of disturbance to other plants around it during balling operation. Also the root balled trees are very expensive when compared with the maintenance cost of a small plant to achieve the same height in a nursery.

Also the survival rate of root balled trees is also very low because of difficulty in adapting to new environment.Even newly planted trees have to be maintained at for least for six months to establish its roots to the new environment. This is very difficult task for root balled big trees because they are accustomed to original environment for long time. This is also a very expensive operation for plantation on a large scale like avenue planting in urban landscaping projects. However, this is not so for small plants about 2-3 ft. height grown in nurseries.

Another issue is the sustainability of newly planted trees. If someone takes interest of evaluating the sustainability rate of trees planted in these so called Tree Planting Campaigns inaugurated by politicians you can understand what I am trying to convey. I am sure it is less than 10% because of lack of maintenance after the inauguration. Maintenance should be done by regular watering and fertilizing at least for three months. Otherwise those inaugurations are simply Green Washing programs cheating ourselves.

I think above facts should be taken into consideration in planting trees in urban landscaping programs now in progress in Colombo City. Otherwise it could be a green-wash similar to whitewash.

Foliage planted in front of Temple Trees is a good example of such waste. My layman’s view is that plants grown in nurseries should be promoted for national level projects.

It is only a matter of maintaining those plants for some time until it grows to a safe height beyond which it is self-sustaining. It will help small scale nursery owners too.

Perhaps experts will shed light on this issue?

source :The Island 2016/08/06 http://www.island.lk/index.php?page_cat=article-details&page=article-details&code_title=149892