Saprudin Bastomi, ‘Tree Doctor’ in Qatar

Al Bayt is the World Cup 2022 stadium with the biggest park landscapes. Saprudin Bastomi also handled the construction of the park at Al Janoub Stadium in the city of Al Wakrah, 22 km south of Doha.

KOMPAS/YUNIADHI AGUNG

Saprudin Bastomi

The sky was growing dark when Saprudin Bastomi, 46, accompanying Kompas, visited Aspire Park in Doha, Qatar, on Sunday (27/11/2022). The park is the largest in Qatar and one of the largest green open spaces in the Middle East, spanning 88 hectares of grass and vegetation.

Aspire Park was the first place where Saprudin worked when he arrived in Qatar in March 2009. Saprudin has beautified the public space, which belongs to the Aspire Zone sports complex of Qatar, planting its grounds with around 800 trees from 80 different species.

The entire expanse of Aspire Park is green. Not an inch in the park is without grass. Only a running track in the middle of the park and an artificial lake are devoid of grass and trees.

It is not only at Aspire Park, but Saprudin has also played a major role in adorning Qatar with green parks featuring colorful, flowering plants. After his five-year assignment at Aspire Park, he received a new job to maintain the green landscape in Education City, Doha.

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He presented a harmonious and cool green open space in the country’s largest educational complex. Now, Education City is counted among the Qatari people’s favorite places to spend the afternoon, relaxing under the park’s shady trees and listening to the calls of songbirds.

In 2016, when Qatar started the green development project for World Cup 2022, Saprudin was recruited as a greening project manager for the Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy of Qatar (SC), which was responsible for all developments, preparations and the implementation of the World Cup 2022.

Saprudin was specially assigned to the Supreme Committee Tree Nursery and tasked with creating parks and greening the eight stadiums of the World Cup 2022.

Now, Education City is counted among the Qatari people’s favorite places to spend the afternoon, relaxing under the park’s shady trees and listening to the calls of songbirds.

While the stadium construction was underway, Saprudin began his job at the Supreme Committee Tree Nursery to prepare plants for beautifying the stadiums. He was responsible for preparing, producing, planting and maintaining around 16,000 trees, 679,000 shrubs, and 425,000 square meters of grass. Various species of trees, shrubs and grass were imported from different countries, including Spain, Thailand and the United States.

The first stadium landscape to receive the “Saprudin touch” was Al Bayt Stadium in Al Khor city, 35 kilometers north of Doha. He converted the area around Al Bayt Stadium, which was previously a desert, into a green park.

KOMPAS/YUNIADHI AGUNG

Saprudin Bastomi

Al Bayt is the World Cup 2022 stadium with the biggest park landscapes. Besides Al Bayt, Saprudin also handled the construction of the park at Al Janoub Stadium in the city of Al Wakrah, 22 km south of Doha.

Apart from the parks at the two stadiums, the grass Saprudin cultivated at the Supreme Committee Tree Nursery was also used at the six other World Cup 2022 stadiums. New grass was also planted at the several training fields used by the World Cup teams based in Doha.

Many people in Qatar call me a ‘tree doctor’.

“From my experience of over 10 years in Qatar, I understand the maintenance suitable for growing plants in Qatar. If a plant dies, I can assess its cause,” said the soil science graduate of Gadjah Mada University (UGM) in Yogyakarta.

While managing Qatar’s national project, Saprudin was also entrusted with advising Qatari people who wanted to build parks and private gardens.

“Many people in Qatar call me a ‘tree doctor’, but actually, I’m only applying the science I studied at university in the past. Thank God, it can benefit others,” said the father of four.

Farming family

Saprudin was raised in a farming family in Segeran village of Juntinyuat district, Indramayu, West Java. Since he was a child, he has been planting crops and working at plantations, helping his parents harvest paddy and oranges, as well as harvesting grass to feed livestock, such as goats.

His decision to study soil science at UGM was inseparable from his desire to answer his curiosity about why many orange trees in his village had died in the late 1980s. Many orange farmers suffered losses as a result, and they blamed a crude oil exploration project that had started at the time.

“After delving into the science of soil, I found the answer that the cause of the decay in orange trees was a bacterial disease called CVPD [citrus vein phloem degeneration],” said Saprudin, who studied at UGM from 1995 to 2001.

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Saprudin’s professional career has also been related to agriculture. His first job was at a jamurkancing (Agaricus bisporus; button mushroom) processing plant in Bumiayu, Brebes, Central Java. After eight years of producing canned mushrooms for marketing in Jakarta, Bali and Singapore, he relocated to Qatar in 2009 to try his luck.

The initial offer to work in Qatar came from a former colleague at the mushroom plant, who had worked in the Middle Eastern country before. Through a phone interview of around 15 minutes, Saprudin secured an opportunity to apply his knowledge of soil science to fields in Qatar.

Today, Qatari people and visitors watching the World Cup 2022 can enjoy the achievements of Saprudin, who has arranged and designed the diverse parks across Doha.

Saprudin Bastomi

Born:Indramayu, West Java, 3 July 1976

Occupation: Landscape Consultant, Partner of Government of Qatar

This article was translated byAris Prawira.