Somewhere in New Delhi....

Two gigantic metal Ashoka trees, one on either side of the road, with creepers climbing along them, may well form the new gateway to the capital. The Delhi government is studying a proposal by artist and designer Alex Davis to construct the Ashoka tree installations at each of the five national highways entering the city. Davis will present his proposal at the first Biennial Congress on Urban Green Spaces 2012, which is being held in the capital from Monday to Wednesday. Davis, a graduate from the National Institute of Design, has had four meetings with chief minister Sheila Dikshit on his project. “It is a nice project. However, we need to resolve the challenge involved in watering plants that will grow on the metal frame. Davis said he will bring in structural engineers to work this out,” Dikshit tsaid on the sidelines of the Urban Green Spaces Congress. For Davis, the Ashokas are a metaphor for Delhi, India’s garden city and one of the greenest capital cities in the world. “New Delhi was designed by Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker, who belonged to the garden city design movement. Delhi contained some of the most celebrated gardens like Mehtab Bagh, Hayat Bakshi Bagh, Tees Hazari Bagh, Begum Bagh and Roshanara,” he said. His choice of tree as a motif for Delhi was inspired by both Moghul miniature paintings as well as the Ashoka avenues that line parts of the city. The installation that Davis has proposed will be roughly the height of a 22-storey building. “A creeper such as the bougainvillea can be placed in pots at various levels so that it will eventually cover the entire metal frame. It can be watered using drip irrigation,” he added. While the government is looking into Davis’s proposal, Singh is quick to point out that the biggest challenge involved in the project is not the construction of the installations but their maintenance. “I am still in the process of fine-tuning the proposal,” says Davis. According to him, the construction of a pair of Ashoka tree installations will work out to around Rs 5 crore. “Most traditional cities such as Jaipur and even Old Delhi were walled cities with gateways. My installations will be modern avatars of the traditional gateways into a city,” said Davis.