KOCHI: Nataraja Upadhya’s green space looks less like a garden and more like a jungle, or as he likes to call it, an ‘urban evergreen jungle’. A farmer’s son and a software engineer, he has been mesmerised by plants from a young age. He used to help his father with planting for 18 years before pursuing his engineering dream. He noticed that most of the high net individuals made trees and plants the core of their living space. “I nurtured a balcony garden and kept many indoor plants in our apartment, which helped spread the green aura,” he said.
This then gave birth to the Ashrama Gardens, where he maximises the area for trees and plants in his compound by combining a terrace and space inside and outside the compound. It houses a total number of 300 species, out of which 50 are trees. At least 50 types of butterflies and 10 types of birds have visited his mini-jungle, with squirrels, bats and monkeys being occasional visitors.
“I retired from my software profession in 2008 and dedicated my life to growing trees and plants since 2010. I am proud to say that my goal has been achieved and now I am trying to propagate this to others,” he said. His jungle has three main parts, comprising the terrace, across 1,500 sq feet, the ground inside the compound, across 400 sq feet and the ground outside the compound across 200 sq feet, with a total of 2,100 sq feet dedicated to flora.
He plants trees in drums. “I try to plant multiple plants from three distinct levels of depth from within the drum, each drum acting as a mini jungle, having an approximate of 1,700 plants,” he said. He added that since the past year he succeeded in converting the jungle into a jungle production factory, primarily planting Mexican sunflowers, the cutting of which can easily be cultivated and planted elsewhere to get a new tree with the least amount of care.
With the aim of propagating the benefits of a green thumb and to highlight the opportunities in growing trees on terraces, he has made more than 350 videos for his YouTube channel depicting the dynamic changes in his jungle.