Growing support for greening of Eiffel Tower

A FRENCH company wants to turn the Eiffel Tower into a botanical giant by draping its under a mantle of 600,000 plants.

The plan is, for now, little more than the dream of an urban planning consultancy that would gain worldwide publicity if its vision became reality.

Its idea, which has not so far been officially endorsed by Paris city hall or the company that operates the Eiffel Tower, would transform the three-floor edifice of more than 300 metres into something akin to a Christmas tree.

Ginger, the consultancy promoting it, issued a statement yesterday to defend a project that it said would symbolise the reconciliation of nature and mankind as the world’s population heads towards nine billion.

Either way the project would amount to the most ambitious remake in the life of the tower built by Gustave Eiffel for a world fair in 1889.

The tower, which saw the addition of 10,000 flickering light bulbs a decade ago, draws about seven million visitors a year.

“Should it not be the duty of engineers to imagine a new future where nature is brought back into the heart of the city,” said a statement from Ginger.

For now at least, it still has to convince. Following the leak in Le Figaro, the company that operates the tower, Sete, issued a statement saying neither it nor the city of Paris were associated with the proposal.

According to Le Figaro, which leaked technical aspects of the proposal, the idea would be to start work next year, connecting 12 tonnes of tubing to the tower’s struts. Thousands of sack-cloth bags, that would carry soil and plants, would be added gradually, working up from the bottom in the same way as a plant grows, over the second half of 2012.