Life in Dubai

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.

One of the things that in my opinion is done well in Dubai is the roadside landscaping.

I took these photographs over the last three or four weeks and some of the gold and red flowers are now being replaced, which they usually do with red, white and blue petunias.

My favourite time of year for the landscaping has gone - my favourite colours are orange & yellow so the marigold period is the most pleasing to my eyes.

But that's finished, the plants have been replaced with petunias and I must say they look pretty good too.

Here's one of the displays just in front of Madinat Jumeirah.



And the landscaping of the new Interchange 5 at Dubai Marina is starting to come good too...

The seemingly endless construction and the ubiquitous red & white cones and bits of flapping plastic that surround us down here in 'New Dubai' really do add to the frustrations, the unpleasantness of driving. And it makes it unnecessarily tiring, just endless red & white industrial-looking stuff in your face all the time.