Napier Museum compound to sport a new look

New walkway, greener lawns, flowerbeds to enliven the sprawling premises.

The leafy environs of the Napier Museum compound in the capital city of Thiruvananthapuram is all set to wear a new look — complete with a new walkway, lawns sporting buffalo grass and Mexican grass, bio-fencing, flower gardens, and upgraded seating arrangements.

The Rs.2.10-crore refurbishment project is scheduled to be officially launched on September 19.

According to sources in the Department of Museums and Zoos, the museum premises would be closed in sections to facilitate the beautification drive. The first to be put in place would be a new walkway near the museum building. This would sport inter-locking tiles and is primarily aimed at aged visitors who find it difficult to walk on the tarred road around the museum that is the favoured haunt of hundreds of morning and evening walkers in the city.

Shelters

In addition to a cloak room and an ATM, the beautification master plan also proposes 12 pavilions with glass roof for visitors to take shelter, both from the sun and rain. In order to give the museum grounds a more ‘natural’ look, the plan moots a waterfall with a cycling pump and a pond and fountains at various points on the sprawling compound.

Considering the large number of daily visitors to the museum, more numbers of park benches — made of cast iron with wooden seating — would be installed all over the compound. In addition to this, roundabouts would be constructed beneath select trees for people to sit. These would sport granite cladding and matching ceramic tiles, the plan documents reads.

A major chunk of the beatification drive would involve redoing the landscaping of the compound. For starters, red earth would be laid wherever lawns are to be created. At some places, the earth would be levelled before the lawns were laid using buffalo grass and Mexican grass. Pots and patches of flowering plants would dot the compound and bio-fencing would be set up along the existing tarred road.

The plan also calls for the cutting down of dilapidated and dying trees on the museum compound and planting of fresh ones. 200 bollard lights too would be installed to ensure better and even lighting.

Even though the master plan had proposed a musical fountain theatre, a glass house, and a cafeteria, these have been kept in abeyance owing to financial constraints.