As far as I am concerned, Phnom Penh city has many public parks but none of them use the xeriscaping technique. So what is xeriscaping, you ask? Xeriscaping (often incorrectly spelt zero-scaping or xeriscaping) is landscaping and gardening that reduces or eliminates the need for supplemental water from irrigation. Don’t bother to look at Wikipedia because I copied the definition from that. Anyway, the reason why I bring this xeriscaping up is because I am bothered with Phnom Penh’s public parks. They are rather boring, filthy, smelly, and consume a lot of water. Oh yeah, I almost forget to put a picture for you to see the beauty of xeriscaping.
Beautiful, is it? If your answer is no then I must say that you have a traditional mind of traditional gardening which uses turf grass. Do you know that turf grass can use up to 3 times as much as trees? Yeah! the traditional gardening uses, I should say ”waste”, a lot of water. Again! Traditional gardening wastes a lot of water also it needs fertilizers, and a lawn mower to trim it. On the other hand, xeriscaping has many benefits over the traditional gardening.
- Save water
- Need less maintenance
- No fertilizer or pesticide need
- Improve urban landscape
- Pollution free
- less cost to maintenance
Despite those benefits, it also has many drawbacks.
- Most people just couldn’t accept the fact that xeriscaping is better than turf, and flowers
- Some plants that consume less water have thorns or serrated edges so they are bad for your pet, your kids and you
- Less turf for sports; I am talking about kids playing football on grass
- And the cost of setting it up is not cheap
Well, it is not cheap but it is a long-term investment and it saves water which means it saves your money too.
Look at Phnom Penh public parks here! they are badly designed and badly maintained. Moreover, a few parts of public parks are used for urination.