This green initiative helps city folk foster a bond with nature

On a green patch of land filled with plants of native veggies, flowers, and herbs in Adyar, people of all ages and experiences from the city get together to nurture the gorgeous greenery every Saturday. The Kasturba Nagar Community Garden has not only been helping one forge a bond with nature, but also with like-minded individuals during the pandemic.

Organised by a group of volunteers in the area, the garden was introduced to the public in 2019. And post a brief hiatus, thanks to COVID and the rains, the garden has been available to the public to nurture plants and conversations with the community ever since September last year. Samyuktha Kannan, who holds a degree in agriculture economics, is one of the key organisers of the initiative.

“It is a shared space where people come to garden and cultivate together. It is a voluntary process, wherein you can choose what you want the garden to look like. We also wanted to use the garden as an educational space for children. This is especially relevant in cities where there is a constraint of space and resources,” she says.

The garden, which is divided into three sections of vegetables, flowers and medicinal herbs, now blooms with fresh tomatoes, gourds, chillies, beans, peas, basil and Chinese potatoes, among other variants. The idea is to get a mix of plants for ecological and educational purposes, adds Samyuktha, who works as a researcher at a food policy organisation, helping farmers deal with climate risk.

“I graduated from the US and I came down here in 2019. In the US, I was volunteering at a community garden and I was looking to do something similar here as I had seen the benefits of a community garden. It was an interesting way to also learn about different food cultures,” says Samyuktha, who went on to pitch the idea to the neighbourhood’s association, which greenlit the initiative. While the garden is managed by a core group of volunteers every day, it is open to the public every Saturday between 4 and 5.30pm.

Vaishnavi, a coordinator behind the garden, adds, “We have a very participatory way of functioning — we planned the layout together, we brainstormed on what all should be done, how it should be done and who would like to do it. We have our own individual projects and set the amount of time we are able to spend.”

The community gardening initiative has helped people come together to reclaim their common space, and be outdoors even as the pandemic lingers, says Pooja Sanghvi, who spends her time at the garden at least once a week. “We continue to follow safe practices like wearing masks and washing hands as we go about the different activities here. We’ve got to know each other well and as a newcomer to Chennai, it has helped me make new friends, something I didn’t imagine I could in these tough times,” says Pooja, who moved to the city from Mumbai recently.
Apart from weekly activities such as gardening sessions for adults and children, the initiative also organises seed and sapling exchange programmes. “We posted one seed and sapling exchange right at the beginning and there was a really good response. The idea was to help people understand that it was possible to save seeds and propagate plants. There is something resilient about propagating plants that are already suited to our climates, such as native varieties of vegetables and fruits and heirloom seeds,” says Samyuktha.

The initiative serves as an excellent community building exercise, the gardeners say. Jozy Auxilia and Xavier Prakash are often found at the garden, spending some time with their 12-year-daughter Katelyn. “We as a community come together and take up tools and contribute in little ways we can, like watering, preparing organic manure, removing weeds, spraying natural pest control etc. It also helped our children get away from their gadgets and spend time with nature,” Jozy says.

Such initiatives also help people overcome space constraints at home. “We also harvest and enjoy the fruits that we sow, take home greens, broad beans, french beans and cowpeas. We all live in flats and have less places to grow plants. So, this gives us the freedom to grow plants and nurture them,” Jozy smiles.

Samyuktha and team are now looking at developing the place further by incorporating a bird feeder, a beehive and an aquatic area. “We want to make this an oasis and make it as hyperlocal as possible and involve local business and explore composting experiments,”
she says.