Of all the word combinations that are guaranteed to strike terror in me every time I come across them, the most terrible and nightmarish must be ‘proġett ta’ tisbieħ’ (‘beautification project’).
Unfortunately for me, it is also one of the commonest around. The main culprits are local councils but they face stiff competition from the folks who tend to public spaces generally, and to roadsides and roundabouts in particular.
As a means to avoid a constant living hell, I try to let the irony entertain me.
That’s because nine out of 10 of the projects that claim to purvey beauty to our drab lives, end up doing the exact opposite. For all the money and rhetoric heaped on them, the public spaces that punctuate our towns and roads are ugly in the extreme, and getting uglier by the running metre.
Two examples will serve to illustrate my disgust.
The first is the recent beautification (I’ll spare readers the single quotes) of the area facing the Notre Dame gate, certainly the grandest and most beautiful gate of the Cottonera Lines.
Thing is, the place was agreeable enough by any standards. On the Żabbar side there was a median strip planted with mature oleander and lantana shrubs. There was nothing the matter with them. On the contrary, they flourished and lent the place a dash of colour for many months a year.
That’s until the beautifiers moved in and ripped out and destroyed them. In their place they put in the requisite turf, a few blobs of pansies and other pointless and short-lived flowers, and a fountain that makes my loo look like a Bernini masterpiece. They also planted a big stone with the words ‘ELC’, ‘Ministru Joe Mizzi’, and ‘proġett ta’ tisbieħ’ carved on it. At least that’s as far as I got before I passed out.
I’ll be getting back to this symphony of stupidity and ugliness shortly. Meanwhile, it’s a short hop to the latest brainchild of the Żabbar council. It so happens that the road that leads past the village on the Cottonera side (I think it’s called Labour Road) enjoys excellent countryside views. Understandably, locals tended to promenade and exercise along it.
Not so understandably, the local council decided that something had to be done to address the issue. A few months ago an army of workmen moved in with another proġett ta’ tisbieħ. The usual lava paving and other clichés aside, they put in a line of the most horrible railings imaginable. It is not known how many strollers’ lives were lost before this safety feature was installed. What is evident is that the countryside views are now only viewable through metal bars.
Most of our newly-beautified places are, in fact, very ugly indeed
These and other pieces of madness are usually dreamt up by some ministry, or a local council, and carried out by people like the ubiquitous Environment Landscapes Consortium. The ELC brings together the Polidano Group and Calamatta Nurseries. It is, in my opinion, the worst thing ever to have happened to public landscaping and gardening in Malta.
Suffice it to look at one of the locations in the consortium’s portfolio. The Kappara roundabout must be one of the most horrible and kitschy places on the island. It brings together turf, palm trees that are held upright by steel cables, and a clock that never seems to tell the correct time.
The people at the ELC specialise in what one might call Dubai-style soulless gardening: a hotchpotch of turf, palm trees, gravel, sprinklers, and flowers straight from the window boxes of Heidiland. It is a labour-intensive type that also requires constant watering and replanting. The ELC appears to have no knowledge whatsoever of plants and trees that thrive without much attention.
Nor does it care much for eco-friendly planting. Their other virtues apart, the uprooted plants at the Notre Dame gate made ecological sense. Oleanders are native to the Mediterranean and provide food and shelter to many animals. The attractive lantana flowers are rich in pollen and a magnet to butterflies and bees.
Unfortunately, the muddled thinking does not stop with landscaping and the ELC. Most of our newly-beautified places are, in fact, very ugly indeed and suffer from at least three maladies.
The first is horror vacui. It seems that no proġett ta’ tisbieħ is complete without its forests of bins, signs, bollards, benches, and lamp posts. The idea is that a place looks better the more stuff is heaped on it. It’s essentially the same aesthetic judgement which crams six gypsum lions and two cornucopia fountains in five square metres of front garden.
The second is a lack of harmony, both within the places themselves and with their surroundings. The point is that white gravel, red-brick paving, and faux Victorian lamp posts are best kept separate, if they can’t be discarded outright. And that, if one absolutely must use them, at least one should aim for continuity and consistency.
The third affliction is a breathtaking insensitivity to materials. The more intact parts of San Anton garden, for example, are made of materials that invite one to touch them. The visual and tactile properties of materials are a big part of the experience of the place.
The materials of the newly-beautified places, on the other hand, generally invite one to take a sledgehammer to them.
The only antidote I can think of to a proġett ta’ tisbieħ is a proġett ta’ tkissir.
mafalzon@hotmail.com