Abuja, Nigeria — twelve years on

Every other entry here is measured in weeks or months. This one is measured in years, and it is the only place on this site where you can see what the trees look like when they have grown up.

The approach road to Abuja International Airport carries an extensive avenue planting, put in with Zander in 2011. The species is the masquerade tree, Polyalthia longifolia — a narrow, columnar evergreen used for exactly this sort of formal roadside work.

Young columnar trees lining the airport approach road at Abuja in 2016 — The same avenue on the Abuja airport approach, photographed at five years and again at about twelve. Planted 2011.

The same avenue at Abuja twelve years after planting, the trees now tall and dense — The same avenue on the Abuja airport approach, photographed at five years and again at about twelve. Planted 2011.

Why this one matters

The and trials answer whether a plant establishes. They cannot answer what happens afterwards, because they were measured over ten months and nine weeks respectively. This does — and establishment is the point at which most arid planting programmes are judged and then quietly forgotten.

It is also the closest thing on this site to what a green belt actually is: a formal avenue along a road, planted at scale, expected to stand for decades. is the same one described for orchards and forestry.

Source — Zander Corporation, Nigeria.

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