Today I intend to do a short video on how to level the land or how to alter the land to suit your house. Of course, there are landscape artists, architects and urban planning experts who have been trained in the discipline. They will have clear ideas about it too. But this is to give you a common man’s perspective on the subject.
Kerala has an average width of 29 km. The heights of the Western Ghats form its northernmost end. That is, Munnar, Anamudi, and other places. Down south, we have Kuttanad that lies below sea level. There is only one other land that shares this same feature – Netherlands or Holland. Kuttanad is called so because it is a land (nad in Malayalam) shaped like a basket (kutta). It is the rice bowl of Kerala. This contrast in geographical features can be seen throughout the state. In most cities, the inclined land has been levelled.
I belong to Kottayam, a land that is full of hills. Long back, when I used to move around on a bicycle, I had to push it up some distance but could ride it down the slopes. Thiruvananthapuram, a land of seven or eight hills, also has this feature. Here and there in between, there are level areas. In most places, coconut and rubber plantations are arranged on terraced land. When houses are built in such areas, the land is levelled further. What happens as a result is that water that should flow down the slopes and replenish wells, ponds, rivers and wellsprings, gets accumulated at various places. The intention behind levelling of land is to make the house site look tidy.
But here we tried out an experiment in four or five cents of land. This video is to show you the result of it. Behind me the land is at a great height. The spot where I sit is nearly six feet below that point. The land inclines further to the next level, eight feet from here. The next level is five feet below. There is another level below it too. So this land is terraced. To have a better view, take a look at the rubber plantation next to this plot.
If I had levelled this incline, I would have got a plot as big as a football ground. Whether levelled ground or inclined land looks more beautiful is a matter of personal choice. There may be others who have a totally different viewpoint also. This style may attract people with interests similar to mine.
These are low-quality roof tiles, discarded when an old building was pulled down. We assembled them here like this, and put up a belt on top. The construction work gets done quickly. There are no additional costs. If there is excess rainwater, it will flow down because these tiles will not cause any obstruction. So these walls need not be very sturdily built. The holes in between will give shelter to ants. And we can sit on these parapets. If roof tiles are unavailable, you can pick up these rough boulders from your plot. I’ve used some of them as basement. Or you can create a belt on top of it and place flower pots there.
I put up a couple of micro Miyawaki forests in these little strips and constructed a house down below in a plot – of 400 sq. ft – that I got there below. Nearly 200-250 sq. ft went into putting up the house. I used the rest of the space to make Miyawaki forests. In effect, three sides of my plot are covered with Miyawaki forests. There is a Miyawaki forest above as well. Shall talk more about the house in the next video. So the moot point is – should we level an incline or preserve it in a terraced fashion?
This is to show you that retaining the incline with terraced surfaces is aesthetically appealing. If you appreciate it, please follow it. There are many benefits. The greatest is that we do not cause any damage to the earth.