It has been almost two years since Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (IBB) removed vertical gardens, clusters of plants adorning the reinforcement walls on the side of roads. The decision had drawn criticism while the municipality had pledged to keep the empty spaces lively with murals. But in two years, the murals remain low in number and gray walls are an eyesore for motorists.

Vertical gardens were among rare green spaces on the long stretch of D-100 highway sprawling across the concrete jungle of Turkey’s most populated city. They were also serving as a noise barrier for residential areas next to the highway, one of the busiest routes in the city.

Citing high maintenance costs, the municipality started removal of the gardens that were planted during the tenure of late Kadir Topbaş, the previous mayor of the city succeeded by Justice and Development Party's (AK Party) Mevlüt Uysal, and then Ekrem Imamoğlu in 2019 local elections.

Imamoğlu, who was elected from the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) is under constant criticism from the ruling AK Party for his controversial practices when it comes to green spaces. Most recently, his municipality has come under fire for chopping down old plane trees on a street, ostensibly to prevent a tree disease from spreading among them.

IBB has announced that the "Talking Walls" project would be implemented at the site of vertical gardens. Talking Walls was planned to involve a series of graffiti murals and, indeed, a number of walls on Istanbul’s Asian side were embellished with graffiti but walls remain empty everywhere else.

Professor Mustafa Öztürk, a former director of IBB’s Department of Environmental Protection and Development, told Anadolu Agency (AA) on Monday that the vertical gardens’ primary purpose was to expand "the green texture" in the city. "The gardens had more than one purpose. They soothed the motorists frustrated with traffic, they absorbed pollutants emitted by vehicles. They are commonly used elsewhere, from Europe to the United States and in some places, they are even turned into a piece of art and visited by people," he said. "Unfortunately, a mindset of improving over what the predecessors built is trumped by a mindset of replacing what is already built with something different. They say the maintenance costs were high but they could have found a way to reduce the costs, for instance, replacing some plants that need higher spending with ones that cost less and have a longer life," he said.

Öztürk added that planting ivy on the walls could be a cheap solution instead of leaving them empty.