Bangalore’s famous public parks may have helped it get the Garden City title, but its residents too have ‘nurtured’ this image with their own little home gardens. The garden culture has always been a part of the city with its residents proud of the geraniums in their flower beds or tomatoes in the kitchen patches.
While the sight of old bungalows with large mango, jackfruit, neem or champak trees is becoming rare, the city’s residents are squeezing in vegetation in pots, on terraces, pergolas and window sills. With so much premium on space, the city’s horizontal growth has been curbed considerably, taking a toll on these stately old trees. And hence, like everything else in the city, trees too are growing vertically. This means, only the coconut trees have managed to hold on to their roots in the face of the steel and concrete invasion. In most homes, a coconut tree seemed to be a permanent fixture. One can tell whether a locality is developed or is still a struggling settlement in the outskirts by looking at its skyline. The sight of coconut trees from any elevated spot is an indication that the locality has “come of age”.
Gardens served not only to improve the aesthetics but also offered utility with the pious housewife picking the hibiscus from the compound , jasmine from the creeper clinging to the barbed wire on the wall for her prayers, or pulling a few springs of curry leaves for her steaming rasam from the tree in the backyard.
The children on the other hand spent time on the guava trees, foraging for fruits on them with squirrels and neighbours for competition or sucked the nectar out of the hibiscus flowers, shooing away the humming bird and the mongrel, which has developed a taste for the buds. The dog however has no competitors for the ripe papayas that drop down to the ground and expose their insides.
Hence, most Bangaloreans today consider it a sacrilege to buy guavas and papayas off the carts and from markets since they could be had readily from one’s garden or the neighbour’s at no cost.
Neighbours are an integral part of the home gardens. While most exchanged seeds, cuttings, tubers or the produce, others simply pinched or “borrowed” pumpkins and gourds from across the walls. Like the garden produce, gardening implements too are borrowed and seldom returned.
A new patch of vegetables is watered under the watchful eyes of not only the owner with the green thumb but also the neighbour who’s green with envy.
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