If you can walk or drive through the city to your workplace, home, or anywhere else without a glance at the flora around town, then you are taking life too seriously.
Life is a serious business, no doubt, but that is no reason why we should miss out on the joy, hope, and gratitude of daily living.
Or, the saying goes, “Life is a serious business, but nobody said we must go through it with a long face.”
A long face means having a sad, gloomy, or disappointed expression.
If you wear such a face, how can you enjoy the world created beautifully for us to live in?
If you wear a face like that, how can you observe the trees, shrubs, grass, farms, gardens, and all the greenery that beautifies the city?
It is to help us deal with our inner turmoil that God created the greenery environment for us.
God is creative!
God is so creative that I always marvel at His creativity!
The sheer number of different species of plants, with their colours, sizes, fruits, leaves, stems, branches, heights, and different properties, is mind-boggling.
Take the neem tree, which is certainly one of Ghana’s most popular trees, as an example of an amazing plant. Highly medicinal, neem is found in virtually every town, its seeds dispersed by animals, birds, wind, and flowing water during rainfall.
Neem tree has been used to heal people over the years. In fact, most of our plants are either sources of food or have medicinal properties.
Breathing in the oxygen produced by trees while releasing carbon dioxide should tell us how flora, in its diverse varieties, constitutes an indispensable part of our environment.
People who drive too fast miss the beauty of plants and shrubs.
Speeding, like anything else done with reckless haste, deprives us of the enjoyment of God’s beautiful creation.
Life is a serious business, yes, but God has given us countless reasons to rejoice along the way, one of which is the flora in our cities and towns.
Green environment
A discussion of gardens such as this reminds us of the first garden, known as the Garden of Eden.
The Bible describes it as a beautiful place, full of lush greenery and fruit trees, with rivers to water the plants.
There was abundant provision of food to feed the first couple and their descendants so that they would lack nothing.
Yet, it was in the midst of this lavish supply that the couple yielded to the devil’s temptation and disobeyed God.
Today, we act like the first couple by failing to tend the gift of a green, lush, and beautiful environment that God has bestowed on us.
But what God told the first couple in the ancient Garden, He tells us today: to till the land and subdue it, tending it to preserve its cleanliness and green beauty.
Heads of state
Almost every head of state of this country has expressed the need to keep our cities and towns well maintained and beautified with gardens and parks.
Way back during President Nkrumah’s regime, his government elevated the Department of Parks and Gardens to ministerial status to encompass tourism.
Why tourism?
ecause foreigners (or local tourists like some of us) enjoy parks and gardens and are attracted to them.
After the overthrow of the Nkrumah regime, the Ministry of Parks and Gardens and Tourism was reduced to a department.
Returning to its former struggles, the department weakened for lack of resources that could have enabled it to green the towns and cities.
Making Ghana a true tourist destination should go beyond promoting our cultural and entertainment heritage; it should incorporate the beautification of our cities and towns with parks, gardens, and private farms in the cities.
Backyard gardening
During the Operation Feed Yourself (OFY) era of General Acheampong, Ghanaians were urged to “grow what we eat and eat what we grow.”
That way, urban citizens were encouraged to engage in backyard gardening that enhanced green spaces.
When he was overthrown, OFY also lost momentum, and the slogan died, leaving personal interest to drive backyard and empty-plot gardening.
This unfortunate political habit, whereby a new government neglects previous governments’ projects, is the bane of our development.
Currently, our president is pressing for a “green, digital metropolis” where carefully planned cities would have residential, commercial, industrial, and financial areas, with modern drainage, good sanitation, and transport infrastructure.
Very laudable indeed. Yet we all know that actions speak louder than words and that a pound of action is to be preferred to tonnes of words.
Therefore, may all the stakeholders and individuals who must act on the president’s initiative hit the ground running.
