Restoring the beauty of our forests

LIKE our homes, we need to clear the land, which was once covered by bushes or even a jungle to make way for a place to provide us shelter, but most of us would never leave half-used building materials lying around our new home.

Or, wait for the weeds to grow back and cover our lawns.

Former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad had said men needed space to live and this always led to land clearing, but men can always replant trees in our homes to replace what we have cleared.

Imagine the booming world population and the amount of land cleared to make way for human space alongside the amount of pollution that follows suit if the need for human space goes unchecked.

Over the past 20 years, Malaysia has doubled its population, from 13 million to 26 million. Imagine the world and all the land that needs to be cleared for living space.

During his keynote address at the International Federation of Landscape Architects (IFLA) Asia Pacific Congress 2014 in Kuching recently, Dr Mahathir said we could still make a difference, despite all that land clearing, by planting gardens for our home landscapes.

"Everyone wants a comfortable place to stay rather than a barren desert. This is where we could spend some time to replace the cleared trees with beautiful landscapes in our homes.

"We can always plant bushes and plants in a kind of haphazard way without any idea of beauty.

"But if you want to live in a good and attractive place, you will begin to think of how to plant these bushes and trees.

"Landscape ideas will emerge because we want to live in a good environment, which later will also become part of our culture," said Dr Mahathir, who played a role in the field of landscape architecture, with the formation of the National Landscape Department, initiated National Landscape Day and National Tree Planting Campaign.

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Restoring the beauty of our forests