A photograph reveals an historical tree”s trunk being supported by one other tree in Nanguo Temple of Tianshui metropolis, Gansu province. [Photo/Xinhua]
LANZHOU－Zhai Shuang’er rises early every day to go to his outdated associates－the traditional and uncommon bushes within the downtown space of Tianshui, a metropolis in Gansu province.
He observes the expansion of every tree by touching its trunk and checking the leaves, jotting the main points in a pocket book.
“The traditional bushes are like residing fossils of a metropolis, recording the modifications and carrying folks’s nostalgia for the previous. They deserve meticulous care,” he stated.
Sixty-year-old Zhai is a panorama engineer with a Tianshui-based engineering firm targeted on greening. He has been engaged in landscaping and restoring historical bushes for greater than three a long time.
Courting again over 2,700 years, Tianshui is house to greater than 2,900 historical and treasured bushes. Of the entire, greater than 100 are over 1,000 years outdated, based on statistics launched by the Tianshui forestry and grassland bureau in 2019.
As a local of the town, Zhai stated his childhood reminiscences are carefully associated to historical bushes.
“There was an elm tree that was round 500 years outdated within the alley the place I grew up. The hole crown of the tree made it a paradise for me and my associates to play hide-and-seek in,” he recalled.
Nonetheless, as a result of an absence of efficient safety measures, many historical bushes suffered from pests and plant ailments, pure disasters, air pollution and human behaviors, together with graffiti.
To resolve these issues, in 2019, Tianshui authorised a set of rules on the safety of the town’s historical and well-known bushes. In the meantime, the town initiated a survey to gather data on the bushes, together with their species, distribution and development situations, feeding it into a brand new database.
“In the course of the survey, we discovered that many bushes have been in pressing want of rescue and safety,” stated Fu Jianhong, director of Tianshui’s historic and cultural safety heart.
The middle organized for consultants to provide you with safety measures for the bushes based mostly on their respective issues, together with treating tree holes, in addition to putting in fences and trunk-supporting buildings, to enhance their residing surroundings.
The elm tree that Zhai knew in his youth was a beneficiary of the safety. Botanists and consultants cleaned up its hole crown and stuffed the varied holes to assist it revive. Their work bore fruit, with tree branches and tender leaves rising, and new flowers coming into bloom.
Nonetheless, the safety work has not been with out difficulties.
“It is exhausting to create sufficient area for historical bushes, as a lot of them develop within the crowded downtown space,” stated Fu.
In 2021, consultants discovered a honey locust tree in a residential space. The tree had struggled to outlive, struggling malnutrition as a result of an adjoining cement highway that prevented its roots from rising correctly.
To save lots of the tree, which was greater than 300 years outdated, the cement highway had to get replaced with one thing much less dangerous.
At first, many residents discovered it exhausting to know why a newly-paved highway needs to be dug up for the sake of a tree, stated Fu. He and his colleagues paid a number of visits to the residents to steer them.
Lastly, with the residents’ help, they dismantled the cement across the tree, changing it with ventilated garden bricks.
“Now the tree is regaining vitality. Throughout summer season, the tree supplies shade and coolness for the residents. Individuals lastly perceive the true that means of concord between man and nature,” Fu stated.
Xinhua
