Where have all the flowers gone?
Congratulations to the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA) for putting into action its plan to restore Kumasi’s former, reportedly conferred status as the ‘Garden City of West Africa’.
Advertisement
By some accounts, that was the description HM Queen Elizabeth II gave Kumasi, evidently in admiration of its abundance of lovely flowers and trees, when she visited the second city as part of her state visit to Ghana in 1961.
Unfortunately, by and by, it became apparent that it no longer deserved that description. “A garden city without gardens” is how one foreigner and one-time Kumasi resident summed up Kumasi’s lost appellation.
But all that is about to change if KMA Chief Executive, Mr Kojo Bonsu, and the project partners are able to succeed in their laudable objective of greening the metropolis.
Anyway, if they’re looking for a theme song, perhaps they will consider a number popularised globally in the 1960s by the American folk singing trio, Peter, Paul and Mary ‘Where have all the flowers gone?’
Last Saturday, according to media reports, the KMA’s project, which aims to plant more than one million trees in the metropolis by 2017, took off with participation by a large number of enthusiastic participants.
I hope that the KMA initiative also includes taking care of the city’s median strips or central reservations – the spaces between the two sides of a road or dual carriageway which are supposed to have flowers or well-manicured grass growing there – because in recent times they have become an eyesore.
For instance, as one approaches the University of Science and Technology campus from Ejisu, the central reservations are usually very unkempt, full of weeds and minus flowers.
However, it’s not only on that stretch in Kumasi that one sees unsightly central reservations.
Almost all those I’ve come across in other parts of Kumasi, as well as Accra, are a mess and in need of dedicated care by the experts, the Department of Parks and Gardens. But does it still exist, this admirable Department, which in the past could be relied upon to keep such public facilities maintained and which also served individuals’ horticultural needs?
Or has that department, too, become part of the growing list of nostalgic ‘the-way-it-used-to-be’ collection?
I’ve always wondered why our governments, road designers and road engineers insist on including central reservations in road designs if no thought is given to how they will be maintained.
Perhaps the virtual disappearance of the Parks and Gardens is only a reflection of our attitude to greening the environment, growing flowers and plants in public spaces.
Isn’t it regrettable that, for example, in the whole of central Accra, there isn’t a single park, public garden or decent green space?
Yet, this country has been so blessed with the right climate and soil that in many places, even if one spits out fruit or vegetable seeds the chances are that in a few days time some of them would have sprouted.
Of course the Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park, housing a mausoleum is in a class of its own and cannot be counted in this context. As for the Efua Sutherland Children’s park, it seems to be straying from its original vision indicated by its name.
Anyhow, hopefully, in the near future Accra will have a respectable park, even if it won’t be located in the city centre. The decision to develop the Achimota Forest into an ecological theme park, which excited some of us so much when it was first announced years ago, is apparently now leading to some initial steps.
Recently, the Forestry Commission advertised for applications for Expression of Interest for the right to partner it in the implementation of the Accra Eco-Park Project. The scheme aims to “turn (Accra) into a major ecotourism destination” within West Africa.
Ironically, western countries, so noted for their awful climate, are the ones who go to extraordinary lengths to ensure that their villages, towns and cities have parks and gardens practically everywhere! A typical example is London.
As busy and congested as central London is, a few yards off its Oxford Street, probably the most famous shopping area in the world, whether one turns right or left, one will find a carefully tended park or a public garden to rest, have a snack or just sit with friends. Yet, their climate is nowhere near what Ghana has been blessed with!
Another example is Seoul, the South Korea capital, a city surrounded by mountains. Their “limited road space”, as one writer put it, hasn’t stopped them from decorating their streets with plants and flowers. They have flowers hanging in baskets suspended in the air, hanging from the lampposts. Years after my visit there, I still have a pleasant memory of those hanging flower baskets.
Postcards from western countries tend to celebrate their flowers and trees. What do the rare postcards produced here show?
Perhaps God gave us too much in this part of the world and that is why we’re so complacent. In my opinion, it would definitely improve the ambience and generate a feel-good factor if Accra had a well-planned and properly organised park in the city centre; free of hawkers, naturally.
Of course currently finding vacant land in Accra, especially the city centre, is impossible. Little wonder that now old structures are being bought and pulled down to make way for modern ones.
Some senior citizens may recall that many years ago, there was a tiny garden opposite the General Post Office (GPO), near what used to be the head office of the erstwhile Ghana National Trading Corporation (GNTC), popularly known as Ghana House. There was also a big car park there.
When the GNTC went bust, the city authorities could have joined the car park space to the garden to expand it and give the city centre at least one space with blooms. Instead, sadly, a multi-storey car park and other structures sprang up there.
In my view those structures have done nothing to beautify our capital city; they have even compounded the clutter in the GPO area.
Anyway, if I ever win the lottery, preferably a rollover, I hope it will be enough for me to buy up all those ugly developments and convert that Ghana House, or nearby space, into a picture- postcard pretty flower garden befitting our capital city.