‘Litter-free’ zone tag for Lalbagh mooted

‘Litter-free’ zone tag for Lalbagh mooted
Deccan Herald

A food court is planned at the garden to which all food stuffs will be restricted to. The food court will be structured like a cottage made of bamboo.

Visitors to the Lalbagh botanical garden, beware. You just cannot litter the botanical garden and get away in the days to come.

In about a few months, the government will declare the botanical garden as a “litter-free” zone for maintaining cleanliness. Once such a declaration is made, the volunteers will catch those littering the garden. Initially, they will just warn the offenders. But in the later days, one has to pay a fine if found littering the botanical garden, Horticulture Director G K Vasanth Kumar told Deccan Herald.

But, he made it clear, that it will take some time for enforcing the litter-free zone regulations as several facilities including food malls, have to provided before such enforcement.

The first step for making the garden a litter-free zone is to establish a food court, which would house all the food stalls. Already the government has cleared a proposal for setting up of a food court at a cost of Rs 1.5 crore near the Siddapura gate in the Garden. Even the hawkers would have to confine their activity within the food court which would resemble a cottage like structure made out of bamboo to gel with the natural ambience of the garden.

Pigeon-hole system -- almirah with small compartments -- will also be provided at the entrance for the visitors to keep their belongings, especially food material, he said. The main intention is to protect the cleanliness at the garden which has nearly 10,000 visitors a day.

Of course, all these proposals are part of the long-term plan of the Horticulture Department to convert this 240-acre garden into an organic cum eco-friendly zone, Dr Vasanth Kumar explained. The organic zone would mean that the entire garden has to do away with the use of fertilisers or chemical pesticides.

Meanwhile, the government has decided to provide a face-lift to the Lalbagh by taking up works to the tune of Rs 9.39 crore. This includes improving the facilities to the visitors, like renovation of pathways, construction of new toilets and providing drinking water facilities.

The garden would also have an insectivorous house, orchidarium, anthurium house with collection of thousands of varieties of anthurium and a rock garden with water falls.