A Better Environment, A Better Future

Responding to my dear friend Jean-Claude Melone’s call to plant trees as a means of helping to save mankind from destroying itself, which appeared in the May 2019 issue of Landscape ME, I thought I would just mention some instances in which his call is being answered.

- John arthur davies

Also, I would add that, while I am passionately in favour of trees and view the planting of a tree as a noble and sacred act, I also believe that, though we have been grossly irresponsible and continue to abuse our planetary home, we are not beyond redemption.

I sense a growing universal awareness whereby we are coming to an understanding that each of us is invisibly inked with all that exists, be it animal, vegetable or mineral, and whichever aspect we abuse, we abuse ourselves. In other words we are all part of nature. Herbert W. Shroeder of the US Forest Service described this invisible link with nature as “the experience of being related to or in touch with another that transcends one’s individual self and gives meaning to one’s life at a deeper than intellectual level.” It is this transcendental aspect of our being, the characteristics of which I know from intimate experience, are love and beauty and which I feel is slowly and quietly expressing itself in the consciousness of humanity. An example of this love and beauty, particularly in respect of trees, was revealed to me a few weeks ago when travelling down the Al Fattah Highway in Manama. A road widening scheme had caused the removal of mature Albizia lebbek trees, however rather than being simply discarded, they had been hard pruned and replanted along the new verge of the soon to be widened road. Transplanting mature Albizia Lebbeck must be a first. I had never before seen it done in Bahrain however it is to be hoped that the trees will generate sufficient hydraulic pressure for water to be drawn from the roots up to the new growths and that these in turn through the process of photosynthesis will manufacture sufficient food in combination with water to ensure their survival.