For years the roof of the three-storey building on Johnson Road in Old Dhaka that houses the Dhaka deputy commissioner's office lay empty. Its roughly 11,000 square feet now hold flowering and fruit trees, small basins where birds can drink and bathe, and artificial bamboo thickets. The garden, built under the slogan "Welcome to the kingdom of birds", is called Akashneer, "nest in the sky", Prothom Alo reports.
According to the district administration and Green Savers, a private organisation that promotes urban greening, 418 plants of 58 species have been planted. Of these, 329 are flowering plants such as bougainvillea, ixora, crape jasmine, night jasmine, Rangoon creeper, jarul, gulmohar, kadam, bakul, frangipani, chhatim and cannonball tree, with water lilies and lotus in the water features. There are 41 fruit trees, among them litchi, star fruit, sapodilla, mango, guava, wax apple, latkan, hog plum, lemon, jujube, banana and papaya, as well as neem and ornamental plants chosen to draw insects.
Dhaka divisional commissioner Md Moniruzzaman Mia opened the garden on 16 September. It cost about Tk 10 lakh, met with help from the administration, individuals and organisations. Green Savers will look after it for three months, after which office staff take over.
Deputy commissioner Farida Khanam said the idea came when she went up to the roof to install solar panels, found it bare and saw birds overhead. "In this city of brick and stone the birdsong is being lost. This initiative is to bring it back," she said. A few caged birds have been placed on the roof in the hope that their calls will attract wild ones.
No birds were seen on the roof on the afternoon of 30 September, though a monkey strolled across unafraid. Staff think the plants are still too small and bear little fruit, and that people's presence keeps the birds away. Video sent by the office the next day did show some birds from the neighbourhood feeding on the roof.
Ahsan Rony, chief executive of Green Savers, said it is a planned roof garden whose main message is that city dwellers can turn any roof garden into a bird sanctuary. The deputy commissioner believes that if government offices, companies and individuals green their roofs in the same way, the city can change for the better.
The report is by Mansura Hossain of Prothom Alo.
Source: Prothom Alo
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