CHENNAI: Vani Shankar, who runs her own store, says her favourite plant is Hawaiian Hibicus. “They are they are in your face, they are dramatic,” she says.
“They come in bright and striking colours and you are even grow them even in pots. They are beautiful.” But if you are heading out to get a stalk for planting, here’s a warning. “They are not hardy and are prone to pest,” says the gardener who lives in Bengaluru’s residential neighbourhood of Indiranagar.
She says that her father started her on gardening. “This city always had homes with gardens and I just grew up watching my father’s interest in it,” she says. “Now I am lucky to be living in an independent house with a fair bit of space.” Vani has trees, flowering plants and even a small veggies patch.
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I mostly have creepers in my kitchen garden,” she says. “I grow beans, such as double beans or flat beans… then there is a huge crop of pumpkin and bitter gourd.” She says that she can’t grow grounded vegetable plants because of her two much-loved Indie dogs, Moon and Ebony. “They destroy them… if the plants are the kind that grow upwards, then they tend to survive,” she says. Having dogs also means that she keeps thorny plants out.
Besides her father, one person who inspires her to garden is Yellamma. “Her daughter in law works with us and Yellamma comes visiting from the village every now and then,” says Vani. “She has magic fingers, whatever she grows just catches so well. She planted my pumpkin plant and that little creeper is so bountiful. She is fascinating… before planting anything, she observes the lunar cycle and the skies. She waits for the right moment before seeding any plant. Last year, the pumpkin creeper gave us 40 to 50 of them and we didn’t know what to do with it. We gave them all away.”
Vani goes to her landscape-designer friend for advice. “The best piece of advice he gave me was not to use chemical pesticides, instead he suggested I try neem oil and tobacco juice,” she says. To make neem-oil solution, Vani suggests that you mix the oil, water and detergent (“so that the oil disperses in the water”). To make tobacco juice, leave the chewing leaves in a bucket overnight and use the extract.
Is there a plant she would not grow? She can’t think one off the top of her head, but she gives it some thought and says, “Staghorn fern… They look like antlers hanging off the walls. They remind me of haunted homes with those hunting trophies of stuffed animal heads under cheerless chandeliers. They freak me out.” They are grown inside coconut shells and feed off the peat, not really requiring soil. “They can grow very huge,” says Vani, with a shiver.
I am like…
I would identify with an animal, not a plant. I am not delicate… if I have to choose one, maybe something clumsy and indiscrete, like wild lantana. It grows all over the place, it is uncontainable.