Friday, March 05, 2010

Twenty seven million flowers

Dubai Municipality say they planted twenty seven million flowering plants in the city last year.

Driving around you obviously see that a huge number of plants are put in and then pulled out as they die off, but an average of a million every couple of weeks is staggering.



It's generally reported that we in Dubai are amongst the world's highest users of water, but I wonder where we stand if the water used for irrigation is taken out of the equation.

My guess is that the total amount of water used is divided by the population number, and I can't find a breakdown of usage by sector. The relatively large amount of landscaping, parks, greenery, flowers across the city must take a large part of the total I would have thought.

Most of the flower beds have the efficient drip-watering system, but there's a lot of wastage with the sprinkler system used for the grassy areas - this morning Al Sufouh Road was awash with water from the grass sprinklers.

Perhaps we individual users aren't as wasteful as the reports suggest.

If you're in the business maybe you could give us some facts on the breakdown of usage...

I read the press release from DM this morning, when I also received an e-mail from our neighbour back in Oz which was also about landscaping.

It included a photograph of some of the flowering shrubs, or trees, in our back garden.



They're tibouchinas, which we put in when they were only about sixty centimetres tall about ten years ago.

Pretty aren't they.

4 comments:

Keef said...

I think the irrigation for public planting is mostly greywater (more accurately, slightly brown water with bits in it), so perhaps wouldn't or shouldn't be counted in the overall consumption figure. Nevertheless, Dubai is staggeringly wasteful of water.

Unknown said...
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rosh said...

It's gorgeous!

RainMan said...

Very interesting, I think I will translate it italian language. Can I?
Obviously I will site the source!