One Tree for each one of us and future.

I personally feel and strongly recommend to have one tree for each one of us. It can be in your back yard or open terrace or if you have farm nothing like it but at least one tree. For me I have decided I am going to have as many as trees that I can for myself and my family. We need trees as many as possible.

We are at an environmentally critical stage that landscape gardening can’t be considered as only for the purpose of beautification or greening of cities, where you plant some decorative plants and trees and you are done. Let’s go back to basics and talk about why we need more Trees in landscape areas in urban spaces. As we all know, increasing urban development has covered most of the natural land surface under dense layer of civil works. Many countries have lost not just green spaces, but even forest lands and got cities built in return. For gulf region it was dessert areas turned in to cities. When we urbanized the areas, we are basically changing earth’s natural surface into hard artificial surface in concrete or asphalt. So, landscape areas left out for gardens or green pockets becomes most important aspect of city-scape design in our lives. Now, we just can’t be a matter of soft landscape only, we must think it as Foodscape and Ecoscape.

When it comes to UAE or GCC region, I strongly recommend to have priority on tree plantation in all landscape areas. Priority to plant trees especially local/native species which will enhance flora and fauna of the country. Trees specially planting local species will help to develop Ecosystem Landscape Gardening for Urban spaces of the country. It is not about planting some plants together. Its combining flora and fauna together to form a community of local plants, birds, pollinators, and other animals including those in the soil, water, and air, that work together to form a cohesive, balanced system.

A perfect balanced landscape design can enhance your mental and physical health and of the environment around you. When you planted the trees it’s obvious in few years nothing will grow underneath of the tree, most of the time maintenance team find it hard to maintain ground covers or lawn underneath of trees due to shadow and roots zone of the trees. Its best to leave at least 2-meter diameter around tree trunk empty as it will help gardeners to maintain health of that tree and treat them with good food. We can design gardens in such way that these empty pockets will not look odd or visible. This will save lot of water and extra maintenance cost that arise due to plants struggle and extra care needed to keep them alive in adverse condition of shaded areas under the tree. We can always have some carefully selected shrubs especially local species in between trees as they are not only providing best nectars but also help butterflies, bees and birds to find their shelter and survive. I have given list of some of the species which will be best for UAE or GCC region.

We can always design landscapes areas carefully by selecting location and spacing of trees and shrubs. When it comes to trees, we must decide what type of trees are we going to plant. Being in UAE first big name in this segment is a Date palms, best tree to plant in terms of Foodscape. Unfortunately, most of the time date palms planted in city areas are the one which farmer has discarded due to infestation or low fruit bearing capacity of tree. So, should we avoid date palms? No, we should plant them as they are the best for ecosystem of the region. But we must decide how we are going to maintain them, if we are planting them only for decoration, (as most of the time what we see in city areas they are planting date palms but not allowed to bear the fruits) then we shouldn’t be planting them. As we must let plants to live their natural life cycle.

In many places you will find Washingtonia palm trees were planted in large numbers. Point here is which one is better for ecosystem and foodscape planting Washingtonia or Date palms? That’s the same goes with Olive trees. Large number of Olive trees are available in UAE and has no foodscape benefits and if we compare it with other local trees suitable to environment and ecosystem, I prefer local species. Most of the olive trees are discarded from their own country as they are replacing old trees with young ones for more better commercial olive production.?Olive trees don’t bear fruits in UAE.

Instead, of going with such trees I will highly recommend to plant slightly uncommon trees like below which has more benefits

1.?????Balanites aegyptiaca which has medicinal benefits,

2.?????Cordia sebestena which bears beautiful flowers and got good salinity tolerance,

3.?????Casuarina equisetifolia best for boundaries high salt tolerance looks like pine tree.

4.??????Terminalia catappa beautiful tree with fruits and high salinity tolerance,

5.?????Acacia farnesiana (Amber) good salt tolerance, medicinal usages, highly grazable for animals.

6.?????Acacia nilotica (Kurot) high salt tolerant, medicinal use, grazable.

7.?????Acacia tortilis (Samar) high salt tolerant, medicinal use, grazable.

8.?????Albizia lebbeck (Lbakh) Highy salt tolerance grazable and ornamental tree.

9.?????Bauhinia purpurea (Khuf-Al-Jemel) Beautiful flowering tree with bilobed oval shape leaves.

10.??Casia italica (Eshrej) Widely used for folk medicines.

11.??Dalbergia sissoo (Sisam) best for timber, grazable used for traditional medicines.

12.??Leucaena leucocephala (Leucaena) High salt tolerant timber tree.

13.??Parkinsonia aculeata (Shauk Al-Bahr) my personal favorite beautiful spiny tree.

14.??Pithecellobium dulce (Ghaf Al-Bahr) ornamental tree with medicinal usages.

15.??Tamarindus indica (Tamr hindi) Tamarind tree high salt tolerance.?

16.??Moringa peregrina (Sheyoa) Good salt tolerant with several medicinal usages.

17.??Rhizophora mucronata (Gurm ahmer) best solution for coastal areas, extremely salt tolerant.

18.??Tamarix aucheriana (Athel) Extremely salt tolerant medicinal plant.

These are not just good trees or shrubs for local weather but they are good for environment and ecosystem. We normally prefer to plant Delonix, Azadirachta, Ficus or Plumeria, why can’t we explore more options and bring diversification to our gardens. Let’s help our flora and fauna to cherish as entire existence of mankind depends on it.

Let’s plant a tree for ourselves and future. We should put some efforts to bring awareness to younger generation students regarding local tree species, how to plant them, how to collect seeds and conservation and propagation of trees. How to make compost, how to manage green waste. Everyone should participate in tree plantation programs and encourage to adopt a tree. Take a selfie with your tree and post it on a google maps. Start collecting seeds of trees and plants and share them with each other. Seeds bank can be good initiative for GCC region. My family and friends has started gifting plants to each other on birthdays and wedding. We must show our awareness towards green future or else there will be no future.

#plantatree #landscape #gardening #ecosystem #biodiversity #foodscape #dubai #UAE ?

References: Bodhivriksha foundation Maharashtra India. Salt Tolerant plants of UAE.?