Kolkata, West Bengal: World Environment Day is celebrated on June 5 every year to remind people about the importance of nature. It is celebrated across the globe to tell people that nature should not be taken for granted and must be respected for its values.
With the corona virus outbreak and people being confined indoors, the environment and mother earth seem to have benefitted slightly. In the absence of human activities amid the covid-induced lockdown, nature is getting time to clean itself and reclaim its space. Gardening is good for the environment for several extraordinary reasons! In the natural process of photosynthesis, plants take in C02 and release valuable oxygen molecules. There is a good chance that we all learned this back in grade school! Should have been listening! By investing time in one’s own garden, one can effectively help the collective effort to reduce the amount of C02 in the Earth’s atmosphere! A concerted effort in areas known to contain high levels of air pollution and smog can definitely benefit from this!
People from various age group are influencing people having grown their own garden. Artist and illustrator Joyeeta Bose from Kolkata says “My garden is a really small one, and i call it jungle not garden actually!! I love to see them grow, new leaves and buds make me so happy and excited, that i keep checking on them. There are many kind of foliage, and specially i have collected few plants whose leaves are extremely beautiful. I propagate my own plants too and that feels like experiments. I make sure as soon as i wake up i check on how they are, if they need any water or not, I do take care of every detail all by myself. Just looking at them makes my morning beautiful.” Joyeeta’s Garden consists of various plants like Maghai Paan, Monsters, Frittonias, Jade plant, different kind of pothos, kamini plant, bougainvillea, Chinese money plant, pennywort, spriral bamboo , self grown potato vines, baby sun rose, pepermonia and many more. On the other hand Ratna Saha from dumdum started gardening in her 50s. Ratna lives with her retired husband, Son, daughter in law and her little Granddaughter. “When everybody was busy in their own way I felt is should invest my time in something fruitful. I started growing flowers. Ever since I experienced my plants blooming my involvement got a different dimension. Little did I realised when gardening became my passion. Ratna is popular in her nickname Mithu. And Mithu’s garden is more popular than Mithu herself. Collecting saplings from ghaleeb street to spending hours making those greeneries bloom is her new found passion. “Offering the deity, flower from my own garden feels truly amazing” adds the senior citizen. People like Ratna and Joyeeta are truly inspiring people embrace the gesture of thanking the nature and making our Environment healthy.
