New Central Vista Greenery to Follow Original Lutyens’ Designs
While designing the new Central Vista, the focus of plantation will be to “keep it as close to the original Lutyens’ Delhi” plan, designers and architects working on the project said. Environmentalist and author Pradip Krishen, who is advising the designers in the Central Vista redevelopment project, said that the new plantation scheme has been designed to replicate the British design for the Capital in 1912. It will also rectify the errors that the city’s horticulture departments have made over the years. Krishen said that initially only 13 tree species were chosen to line the avenues of Lutyens’ Delhi; the number was subsequently increased to 16. “The criteria were that the shape and the size of the trees chosen for that particular avenue should be just right in order to frame the feature they were facing. Three things were kept in mind: they had to be the right size, they had to be evergreen and they should not be common. That was the reason why species that the Mughals preferred, such as mango, or shisham did not find space in the avenue scheme,” Krishen explained. Lutyens’s plan accounted for around 450 trees in all, of which at least 385 were rai-jamun trees. Today, however, there are at least 3,200 large trees (4,000 if the smaller ones and shrubs are included). Around 1,080 are rai-jamun trees, a spokesperson for HCP Design Planning and Management Private Limited (HCP), the firm in charge of the project design said. Of these, 21 are being transplanted to make space for amenities like toilets for the public, the spokesperson added. To be sure, trees of this size can’t usually be successfully replanted. Historians said that Lutyens initially designed this part of Delhi with all streets crossing at right angles. However, this was later tweaked, taking into account the dusty Delhi weather. Thus, the trees, hedges, even roundabouts were carefully designed as barriers to seasonal dust storms.
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