Irregular maintenance takes a toll on vertical garden

Neeraj Bagga

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, January 17

Irregular maintainance has taken a toll on the vertical garden in the Heritage Street. Installed with much fanfare to add green lungs to the beautiful street leading to the Golden Temple, the vertical garden has nothing to show other than dried vegetation and mud on the pillar of the elevated road facing Dharam Singh market chowk.

Binay Pal, a tourist form Kolkata, said, the entire stretch of the Heritage Street was a treat to walk down and up. “Finely chiselled statues of Maharaja Ranjit Singh and other historical structures reflecting the Sikh architecture take the beholders to the bygone era. But, when one comes to the middle of the stretch and has a glance at the vertical garden, things turn nightmarish,” he said.

Another visitor, Bhupinder Singh, from Moga said it showed lack of maintainance on the part of the Municipal Corporation (MC). “Keeping in view the high number of tourists visiting the Golden Temple from across the world, the MC should have devoted more time, staff and funds for maintenance. However, this is not the case,” he grumbled.

MC Commissioner Sonali Giri said the vertical garden was given to a bank under the corporate social responsibility. “Due to cold weather, the plants have withered. All of them need to be replaced,” she added.