Gardening

"Never underestimate the healing power of a quiet moment in the garden"-Nature Hills Nursery.

My love for plants, trees and gardens must have been ingrained in my heart and soul since I was a little kid. Because I can’t remember a time when I was not interested in them! And even though I can’t track back to an exact time when it all started, the  clearest of all those early memories are of my ‘Baje’s(granpa) garden. When I say garden, do not get any ideas of garden that was grandiose in nature! Perched on the mountain slope, as most homes in Darjeeling, facing the glorious Kanchenjunga range, our garden wrapped itself around our little house, terraced and winding like a python resting after a glorious meal. Even though my Baje’s garden wasn’t huge, everyone liked it and said he had a green thumb!

I could still vividly see the delightful time we got to spend in his garden planting little saplings of cucumber, pumpkin, squash, mustard greens, beans and corns, watering them, dirtying our hand in mud, eating baby cucumbers even before they start to swell and my grandfather chasing me away from the garden! I would sneak behind him to open up the ripe Cape gooseberry (sometimes half done) pick and pop it into my mouth and leave the cover intact! Of course, he would find out and chase me out again. He must have known what ‘the little rat’ did in his garden 😀. It’s with such fondness that I remember those times with him and even though he passed away in the 80’s, those memories still brings a smile to my face.

Kale

My father must have inherited that passion for gardening from my baje, but his passion was ten times higher! And he started experimenting with wider variety of flowers and plants.As I had to help out with this increase in 'chores',with his increase in 'experiments', the memories are always not great😅.But I learnt a lot from him all of which I'm able to apply now in my garden!

My dad had around 10 to 15 bonsai ranging from 2 to 10 years, some of them were my favourite! he not just had a robust collection of bonsai but also had a huge collection of Cymbidium orchid which he would collect and bring home each time on his official visit to different parts of Darjeeling.And I helped him prune,train the branches and re-pot as well.After all the years of hard work, at one point he felt it was cruelty to plant them in small pots so he replanted all of them on the ground.

This maple shown in the picture here, once a bonsai,has grown into a huge tree ,standing tall in our small garden!

In spring my dad would take us to the forest to collect the forest leaf to make compost. On bright sunny days, cicadas crying loud and hard (that sound to this day, reminds me of home!) all of us, the family of four, would head to the nearby forest with sacks for a day of hard labour(or at least I thought so then).

He would collect the compost and fill the sacks as per the weight we could handle. The easy part was going down to the forest as you walk or rather run downhill, all boisterous and chirpy!. The return on the other hand was all uphill, a herculean task! One that would make our hearts thump so hard that you literally feel it in your chest, like in the 'looney toons' cartoons; thump, thump thump,...😵.

One of biggest challenge in maintaining a garden, especially in a high altitude hilly terrain is – Water! And Darjeeling has a notorious history of water shortage, even back then when the population was less but more so now,as the population has exploded beyond comprehension around the town!. Water was and still is an important commodity to be used sparingly for everyday use, let alone for gardening! Imagine having rows and rows of plants to water. Who would get the water from the springs? Yup! You guessed it right, me😂! I could write and write stories titled’ adventures of a water carrier’ but that is for another day. It was a horrible and fun job at the same time, walking all the way up and standing in queue with the whole village, waiting for our turn to fill the jerry cans.

Anyways, coming back to the flowers, my dad had three seasonal flowers on display every year. First to bloom would be Cineraria in the springs along with the perennial ones like Cyclamen, Gloxinia and Primula.  Planting seeds would start in September for spring display. So by March we had a huge display of around 30 to 40 flowering plants .Every morning as the sun goes up, we could hear the buzzing of honey bees and house flies in equal numbers fighting for space for the precious nectar! So imagine the amount of compost required for the flowers, phew!

Squash from the garden

One of my foraged plants from the forest long ago flowers every spring inviting all kind of birds.

By the time we were enjoying these amazing display of cinerarias in full bloom, the begonias would start popping out from their bulbs! So potting them would start and we had to place it in every inch of space possible. These plants would take around two months to grow, so by monsoon these delicate beauties would be showing off their outstanding brilliance.The stands outside the house would slowly change the ‘tenants’ for the next season.The cineraria producing seeds for the next year would slowly leave, giving way for the new comer 'begonias'!.

And then around June, we start with taking chrysanthemum cuttings from the old plants. Alongside the begonias these autumn flowering perennials would root and establish strong shoots for the autumn flowering. Along with the chrysanthemum in the pots, beautiful marigolds will be competing with them in the garden or anywhere they have sprouted.And even though by autumn, things starts getting cold and gloomy, these flowers would bring so much cheer and joy to everyone of us!

Magnolia

By writing so much about these flowers, all I am trying to say is how much work I had to do 😁..

Now looking back, it is not the hard work that I remember but the colourful riot they brought to my life and the joy and wonder they gave to everyone passing by! That feeling can never be replicated. Happy Gardening!