The dusty and dirty underbelly of the AJC Bose Road flyover in south Kolkata will have vertical gardens, similar to the gardens under the Metro corridor in New Town, the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) has decided.
The garden will serve multiple purposes — add some green to a road that has very few trees along it and limited scope for new plantation, prevent gradual encroachment of the open space, help reduce the dust and add some visual appeal to an otherwise barren corridor.
The vertical garden, KMC officials said, will first be set up on the stretch between Minto Park and the SSKM Hospital-end of the flyover.
The piers and the deck of the flyover, which can be seen from the road below, will have plants hanging from them.
The stretch under several other flyovers in Kolkata — including the Parama, Gariahat, Garden Reach, Taratala and the Park Street flyovers — are poorly maintained.
A resident of Gariahat in south Kolkata said the entire stretch below the Gariahat flyover looks ugly.
“The open space is being gradually encroached. Fast food stalls have mushroomed and the space is very poorly kept,” he said.
“Scores of homeless people have set up home under the flyover. Their numbers have been steadily increasing and the stretch is becoming dirtier with time.”
The stretch under the Park Street flyover does not have encroachments but grassless soil on one section makes the area dusty and ugly.
Waste is often thrown into the open space. The stretch under the Taratala flyover is dusty, too.
“We have decided to create vertical gardens under the AJC Bose Road flyover. We will create the garden on a small stretch initially and then scale it up. We want to start work on the section between Minto Park and the Maidan-end of the flyover,” said Debashis Kumar, mayoral council member in charge of the KMC’s parks and squares department.
The KMC has begun discussions with the Hooghly River Bridge Commissioners (HRBC), custodian of the flyover, for its nod for gardening.
“The HRBC also needs to be kept in the loop so that the cables supplying electricity to the lights on the flyover and the drainage pipes that channel rainwater from the flyover are not affected during the gardening work,” said a KMC official.
“The vertical gardens will add foliage on a stretch that has very little green cover. The footpaths are so narrow on that stretch that there is hardly any scope for new plantation. The vertical gardens will absorb the dust and also enhance the beauty of the area,” said the official.
The stretch under the Park Street flyover
Anumita Roy Chowdhury, an air quality specialist, said green plants are known to absorb dust.
“The foliage can filter dust to some extent and also reduce the radiating heat from concrete surfaces in cities,” said Roychowdhury, executive director of New Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment.
Concrete absorbs and radiates heat raising the temperature of the immediate surroundings, she said.
This effect is known as the heat island effect.
