The Bucharest branch of the Romanian Landscape Architects Association (AsoP) has developed a green registry for Bucharest's Kiseleff Park, focusing on one of the oldest public gardens in the city and in the country for a best-practices example of how parks and green spaces can be managed.

The project, Green Registry for Kiseleff Park | Green Registry for Romania (RVPK), centered on the heritage park to show how smart tools can be deployed to keep track of a green area's tree and shrub population and its amenities and for its management and further monitoring.

The idea of a green registry is an older one, going back to the contributions made by AsoP Romania to the drafting of a law on green spaces. The current law stipulates that all large cities (municipalități) need to have a green registry, Diana Culescu, the vice-president of AsoP's Bucharest-Ilfov branch, says. Still, no locality in the country has developed a green registry yet, she points out. "Several cities paid for things called a green registry or green cadaster, but they are done by people who know how to make topographical measurements but don't know what a green space is." She gives the example of Bucharest, which has a registry that is a map, dating back to 2013, of the city's green areas, posing usability problems for the City Hall employees themselves, she explains. 

"What I mean by a green registry is a tool that helps maintain the green space," she explains. After design and implementation, maintaining a green space is the lengthiest phase in such an area's life. It can take one month to a couple of years to design a green space and generally another two years to set it up, as two warm periods are needed to plant all the vegetation. What comes after is the maintenance phase, covering the entire life span of a green space. She gives the example of the Gardens of Versailles, where the maintenance phase has exceeded 400 years. In the case of Bucharest's Kiseleff Park, it has gone past the 150-year mark.

Green areas consist of not only trees but also other types of vegetation, such as shrubs or perennials, which should be included in a green registry, as should various amenities, ranging from urban furniture to lighting and irrigation systems. "The same norm of the Law 24 stipulates the need to have information about amenities. We don't have this information [e.n. included] now."

The accuracy of the data is another issue, she points out as she opens Google Maps to contrast the image of an area in Bucharest's Victoriei Square to what is shown on the current map of green areas. Several large trees, shown in Google Maps, are missing. "This is saying a lot regarding the accuracy of the information," she says.

The quality of the data available is equally important. This could be refining information about the species a tree belongs to so as to include information about its gender. She gives the example of the poplar tree (Populus), a species with both male and female trees. The latter produces the cottony fluff that can trigger allergies. Knowing the gender of the trees planted could help alert city residents of areas where species they might be allergic to are in bloom so they can avoid them, she explains, giving the example of the city of Lyon, which developed an app for this.

While the current registry includes information about tree topping, a practice specialists say it is harmful to trees, it doesn't allow for more than one issue to be listed in relation to one tree. A tree can have problems such as a dead branch, issues with the trunk or the leaves, but only one can currently be listed, Culescu explains.

At the same time, the current records on the city's tree population use an approach borrowed from forestry, meaning trees are looked at in terms of how much wood they can provide. "They look at how well the trunk is preserved, and they don't care about the leaves, the roots, about anything else." Not all trees should be treated equally, she points out. Forestry trees, which are used for timber or to protect from winds or soil degradation, are always seen as a population, the landscape architect explains. Another category is that of the fruit trees, which bear fruit for consumption. Unlike the previous two, amenity trees are not planted for commercial purposes. These trees need to be seen as individuals because the relation that a particular tree has with a target, which can be people, cars, or constructions, is important, she explains, giving the example of the linden tree (Tilia) associated with Romanian Romantic poet Mihai Eminescu. The tree is found in Copou Park in Iași and has protected status. In the case of a tree that is crooked and might create damage, a decision could be taken to cut it because the target, such as the people or the cars, cannot be removed. The discussion, however, could be different in a tree with a cultural value. Unfortunately, these are only seen from the point of view of their wood value in the current registry, she explains.

The registry should also keep track of the shrubs in a green area. Currently, all shrubs are treated the same, regardless of when they are flowering, she says, pointing to the case of the Cișmigiu Park in Bucharest. "Cișmigiu has a lot of shrubs that should be flowering all the time. You cannot see that because we are pruning the shrubs when we have the budget. We have the budget in April, then in September, they are reevaluating the budget. These are the moments when the buds appear."

Given the situation, AsoP started looking for solutions and models on how a green registry could look like, and they turned to the app TreePlotter, developed by the US company PlanIT Geo. Since they have partnered with various NGOs to work on historic gardens and related projects, they had used before the basic module of the app. The ease of use of the app, which doesn't require the installation of a program, or skills in working with a GIS (Geographic information system software) program, weighed in the decision to choose it. Various other modules can be added to the core one related to trees, such as one referring to irrigation systems, lighting systems and other amenities.

Next, they started to apply for the funding needed for a pilot project that would allow them to showcase the usefulness of the app with the modules the city halls need. "We started applying for financing in order to do a pilot project that would allow us to take the application with those modules that are needed by the city halls," she explains.

They applied several times with the project, one challenge being to convince funders of the need to pay a considerable sum for the application. "We wanted to take a form [of the app] that is made for, let's say, the Ministry of Environment and all cities can add data to it, or for the county government. All the cities in the county could put data into it, which would be a huge database. That's why it was so costly." This year, AsoP received funding from Raiffeisen Comunităţi, the accelerator developed by  Raiffeisen Bank and the Association for Community Relations. "For us, it is an opportunity to make a pilot project that all localities can adopt. Over 3000 localities in Romania can benefit from this project."

They started the project in April of this year and began by making a 3D survey, using the Lidar technology. The technology can be costly for a non-profit, so ASoP found a partner to join the project - Topro. She likens it to having an x-ray of the park as the point cloud survey allows for the gathering of very detailed information and the topographical positioning of all the elements in the park. "You can have all the information that you need: where the garbage bins are, where the benches are, everything."

Working with students from the Landscape Architecture School of the University of Agronomic Sciences of Bucharest (USAMV) and people from the community, they added further information to the data provided by the survey. They only gathered the data needed for the work of maintaining a green space. Information related to the trees' size, diameter and more is included. "You don't need to take all the data from the field. You need the data that will help you manage that green space," she says. The application can show, for instance, the area that is covered by a tree's roots. This is very useful when deciding where to place park amenities. On a map, if the canopy was cut, it might look like the tree takes up a smaller surface, but specialists need the information so as not to damage the roots when inserting the irrigation system or a lighting one. This has happened in the case of a historical plane tree in Cişmigiu Park. Two of its main roots were cut, and the tree is now dying. "That's because they had no idea that you should look at the roots of the trees. […] We gathered a lot of data right, now we are processing it in order to make it public and make it so that the public can understand more."

On the topic of the amenities of the park, she gives the example of an alley in Kiseleff Park dotted with garbage bins. While some are very well positioned, others are not used at all, she points out. This is where a green registry could help decide where and how many such bins to place, keep track of the models used, and how many times they need emptying, cleaning, or repairing, all with their budget and staffing implications. Each model comes with its own emptying method, but at this point, many are left with a plastic bag that, because of budget constraints, has to be reused.

Cities around the world have developed green registries to use in making a variety of decisions, including ones related to environmental equity, as expressed in the 3-30-300 rule. The latter argues that residents should see three trees from their dwelling, have 30% tree canopy in their neighborhood, and live within 300 meters of a high-quality green space. Where and what should be planted should be included in a green area's maintenance plan, informed by a green registry, she explains.

She gives the example of the Buxus plant, widely used in historical gardens for topiaries, the practice of clipping foliage and twigs to achieve a certain shape. The plant, also found in Bucharest's Cișmigiu Park, is troubled by a damaging insect, which has led many historical gardens in other countries to stop planting it, she says. The same happened to the plane tree. "In Lyon, where almost 60% of the trees were plane trees, because of illnesses and pests, they started changing the plane trees, which is also changing the image of the city. This is something that should be in the maintenance plan." Similarly, Cismigiu's most recognizable alley used to have elm trees at the end of the 19th century but because of a disease that affected them, they were replaced with tilia trees. This is in keeping with the reasoning that the vegetal composition of a green space needs to be maintained, not all the time the species, she explains.

Spreading the word, training the specialists

The next planned steps include integrating the data collected for various reports and statistics, but also a guide allowing decision-makers to see what data is needed and how it can be used for better maintenance of public green areas.

Sharing the information and the activities within the project with the community is another element, and AsoP is planning further webinars, available in English translation, on the topics related to its work. Its recent summer school #AgoraKiseleff gathered specialists, young professionals, and the general public. The project was a partnership between ARCHÉ and AsoP Bucharest, supported by the National Institute of Heritage and the Ion Mincu University of Architecture in Bucharest. It added a cultural layer to the communication of the project to the broad public, she explains. Some of the specialists invited to share their knowledge were Katalin Takács, an expert in historical gardens heritage, arborist Evan Sims, and Pascal Prieur, the president of the French Arborists Association.

ASoP's education-related drive targets professionals and local communities but also schools. One recent activity was held at the Informatics High School in Bucharest, where the non-profit talked to students about the need for and use of instruments like the green registry. The organization is also preparing a conference for specialists working in the area, and participants will also be able to try the green registry app.

Since specialists trained to deal with the maintenance of green spaces are also needed, AsoP is working with the National Center for the Development of Professional and Technical Education (CNDIPT) to develop a first program for urban gardeners at the Cezar Nicolau Technological High School in Brănești, near Bucharest. "At this point, we are preparing [e.n. specialists] for design – we have over 2,500 landscape architects, and about 10,000 architects that can work on green spaces. There are companies that know how to do their business in construction very well, and you can teach them how to plant, but for maintenance, we are not training anybody," she explains.

Besides Kiseleff Park, AsoP has also started working on other sites, adding information about Kiseleff Boulevard and working with students to develop a registry for the Botanical Garden in Bucharest. The capital's Unirii Boulevard is another site where the project is being expanded. Meanwhile, in the country, interest in the tool emerged from Aiud and Călărași.

(Photos: Dragos Grama, courtesy of AsoP)

simona@romania-insider.com