BENGALURU:For most of us, gardening is a hobby, but for Hariesh Krishnamurthy, gardening is a full-fledged profession, part of life and a sweet memory from childhood.Hariesh loved gardening and planting ever since his childhood, when his mother and he had a small garden in his house, with brinjals, tomatoes, chillis, and broad beans. What started out as a fun activity kindled his interest towards pursuing horticulture as a field of study, and Hariesh now holds a post-graduate degree in horticulture from the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University in Coimbatore.
“My parents were skeptical about horticulture as a career. We studied about trees, orchids, urban landscaping, and gardening. Exactly 20 years ago, I stepped into this profession that had few private entrepreneurs at the time. I still feel that people need to be given the right information and everyone must approach gardening as an emotion,” said the Chennai-based enthusiast, who founded The Offshoot in 2016, a landscape gardening and plantation consultant service. He is also the administrator of a Facebook page called School of Gardening, which is used for sharing information on gardening and has around 10,000 members across the globe.
Back in the late 90s, when Hariesh started out his career, he felt that malis (gardeners), the traditional gardening community, were dwindling in numbers. This led to an increase in labourers, who were appointed as gardeners for the sake of livelihood. That was a time period when urban landscaping was flourishing in private entities and software companies as well. On the other hand, many home gardens were diminishing due to the increase in apartment homes with space constraints. “I decided to venture into this area by helping people set up home gardens and sending labourers to prune and clean the gardens. Not many were aware of repotting, transplanting, how to identify a problem or removing diseased plants and we had to train them.
There were a few old people out of the whole lot who’ve been maintaining their garden for years and are successful even now,” shares Hariesh, who has clients around Chennai seeking out his professional advice and counsel. This led to his setting up of the Organic Terrace gardening workshop five years ago. The workshop is held on every third Sunday of the month at Ashvita Bistro in Chennai. The workshop addresses new concerns every month. The upcoming session is on setting up a vegetable garden. He also conducts gardening workshops in educational institutions, as he strongly believes that kids must be taught about the patience required in setting up a garden, such as how long a seed takes to grow into a plant and yield fruits.
“Seasonal plants must be grown only in that particular season. Plants that grow in shade and sunlight are different. Unless people understand these dynamics they cannot have a healthy garden. It is not a one-day effort that has immediate results. However, this field has been commercialised and people end up burning their pockets. Money-making is different from sharing information,” he shares. Hariesh is currently growing his own vegetables in a 1,100 sq ft garden, which hosts vegetables that grow in two seasons. One is from December-January and the other is from June-July. He has five bonsai plants that are shaping up and might take another six years to grow completely. “Bonsai is different and it takes time to grow. I am also a part of the Bodhi Bonsai Association,” he adds.