Category: Parks & Gardens

Watching the Royals Die: The plight of the Chinar Tree in Kashmir

Greater Kashmir, one of the main newspapers in Kashmir, published the article ‘Watching the Royals Die’ by Jaasindah Mir and Jan Haenraets about the plight of the endangered Chinar trees in Kashmir. To view the full text as Pdf, go to this LINK (790 KB). These royals are the Chinar trees, the booyn, of our Kashmiri land. …

Save the Chinar: The Endangered Heritage of the Oriental Plane Trees of Kashmir (Intro)

The Chinar, the Oriental (Eastern) Plane tree (Platanus orientalis), is living heritage of Kashmir. It is a majestic tree that can be found throughout the landscape of the valley, hillsides and cities. The oldest found Chinar is thought to have been planted in the year 1374. Their number has since the 1970s been in a steady decline with over 25,000 trees …

Mughal Gardens of Kashmir: Towards the UNESCO World Heritage Nomination (Book Proceedings)

The International Seminar on ‘Mughal Gardens of Kashmir: Towards the UNESCO World Heritage Nomination’ was held in Srinagar at the University of Kashmir from 14 to 16 May 2011 and was the first international seminar on these famed gardens. The Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage, Jammu and Kashmir Chapter (INTACH J&K), in …

Japanese Flowering Cherries, the standard book by Wybe Kuitert (free online book)

With the cherry blossoms in full bloom it is a good moment to point out that the standard reference book on Japanese Flowering Cherries by Wybe Kuitert, with Arie Peterse, with a foreword by Roy Lancaster, is now free and authorized available online. Japanese flowering cherries have inspired gardeners for more than twelve centuries. They are closely …

Nesting Instincts

This article highlights a winning Art + Habitat design by Atelier Anonymous in partnership with Mike Seymour, and which features in the Spring 2015 issue of Landscapes|Paysages, the Canadian Society for Landscape Architects’ journal. For Barn Owls (Tyto alba), life can be precarious. Indeed, in many areas of the world, including British Columbia, they are threatened or rare, in large part …

A Non-Urban Approach

The World’s Societies have become largely urban; nearly everywhere, land has been occupied or colonized. Where once identity and community were linked to the land and to natural systems, the landscape is being stripped away, new layers added. During this process of transformation, society has become accustomed to an ‘urban approach’: a reliance on interventions that …

The Zen Garden & Why Use the Word Zen?

Prof Wybe Kuitert of the Seoul National University explores in this article the subject and origins of the “Zen Expression” in the garden art of Japan. He investigates how the theme and expression of Zen appears to not be found in old Japanese Garden texts and neither in early twentieth-century literature on the subject of garden …