BMA is building an ‘Urban Forest' to weave more trees through Bangkok

A tree near your home sounds like an ordinary thing to have. But the temperature keeps climbing and the city keeps filling up with buildings, roads and concrete, so a patch of greenery matters more to the rest of us than it ever did.

That's why Bangkok doesn't just want a scattering of public parks. It wants to link the trees and leafy corners dotted across town, slowly joining them up as one ‘green network' – or, put plainly, turning the city into somewhere with more trees, and somewhere that gets on a little better with nature.

One of the ideas the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) works on at the moment goes by the name Urban Forest. It doesn't mean growing giant new woodlands from scratch. It also means planting fresh saplings, caring for the ones already standing and protecting the old-timers that matter to the city.

On August 15, the BMA invites people for a gentle wander among the trees and birds at Benjakitti Park, part of a media field trip called Exploring Bangkok's Heritage Trees. Deputy Governor Pornphrom Vikitsreth leads the way with a team of arborists from the Department of Environment, stopping along the boardwalk to point out the notable specimens and talk through how you keep a mature tree healthy in the middle of a city.

The day forms part of a plan to survey and register the city's ‘heritage trees', the big ones that carry ecological, historical and environmental weight. The BMA wants a proper record of the lot, from the veterans in public parks to the workaday ones lining the roads. Planting from scratch is only half the job; the trees that have shaded us for decades need looking after too.

Once a tree makes the register, it earns clearer rules for its upkeep. Any pruning or other work has to be checked and signed off by specialists, so its canopy, shade and value stay intact. As the council sees it, trees are assets, and some are worth far more than they look from underneath.

So what can the rest of us do? 

A greener city can't happen on the BMA's watch alone, because the greenery sits everywhere, from gardens and schools to communities, parks and the kerb. The idea is for everyone to chip in, starting small. Plant something, water what's already there and flag the old survivors that might be worth saving.

Got a giant near your flat, or know an old one that's shaded your soi for as long as anyone remembers? You can look it up and add your own to the city's tree database, which helps track how the green spaces grow and how the whole lot gets cared for over the years.

Because a greener Bangkok probably doesn't start with one enormous park. It starts with a single tree you choose to plant, or an old one you choose to keep.

Search for a tree or register one of your own at the BangkokTree website.