Blooming wonders

Blooming wonders
Deccan Herald
Metrolife profiles three prize-winning home gardens of this year’s Lalbagh Independence Day flower show.

It’s a good feeling to know that there are still gardens in the City who help to keep the name of the garden city of India alive and well yet.

For old Bangaloreans, the City has always been synonymous with flowers and gardens. IT is a new phenomenon but obviously the policy of live and let live has let the old lifestyles prosper, along with the new. Every year, the Lalbagh horticultural section awards prizes to home gardens across the City under various categories. These are amateur gardeners who are awarded recognition for their efforts and Metrolife had a chance to chat with three of the best.

For the last six to seven years, Thangam Nambiar, wife of BPL chairman, has been awarded outstanding prizes for her home garden. Chatting with Thangam in her gorgeous garden filled with potted plants in the front, she reveals, ”I have always loved gardening. We used to live on Ali Asker Road before and have a great garden there, but have now moved to Lavelle Road. I worked with only one mali here. A new man who does not know much, but I supervise him in his work. I have a bore-well so I have no water problems for the garden.”

Bright red salvias, phlox, anthurium and balsam flower in profusion in neat rows, and no wonder Thangam won the first prize for her garden. Behind the house is a large manicured lawn and there she has ‘Bird of Paradise’ and Indonesian Heliconiums which are flowering in all their jewel colours. Thangam won the first prize for the best home garden.

Who does not know the legendary Priya Mascarenhas and her ornamental tropical and fruit garden at her home at Silver End on Cookson Road? Priya has won the prize for, hold your breath, the 27th time. She is probably the only one who has won the Javaraya Rolling Shield for the last 15 years.

“My garden is not a modern, manicured one,” explains Priya. “Heliconiums are my signature plants,” she says as she poses for the cameras, adding, ”I have imported them from all over the world.”

Around the garden she has fruit trees like guava, mango, jack fruit, figs, sapota, custard apple, avocado bulls-heart and in the centre is the foliage. “You see this is an old Bangalore heritage home and a well-manicured garden will not blend with the colonial home. My lush tropical garden marries well with our 150-year-old home,” she says, while we walk around taking deep fragrant breaths. Priya has a special room in her home where the prizes her garden has won are proudly displayed.

R K Vadivelu’s garden in Mahalakshmi Layout has been awarded four prizes. The prizes were for the best potted plants, the best terrace garden, the best flower garden and the best ornamental garden. In his pot arrangements, he had stunningly beautiful cox-comb, zinnias, balsams, dahlias, fire-bush and rex begonia rows and rows of perfect pots all flowering happily.

The terrace garden had a mind-boggling collection of anthuriums, African violet, orchid, rex begonias, impatience, and leather ferns from Nagaland. His rose garden is something out of fairyland with its fragrant collection of roses, all blooming in profusion.

His ornamental ficus and fibre plants, imported dracinia from Holland are all amazing and growing so well, it is no wonder he clinched the first prize. “I have 35 varities of anthuriums, 15 colours of gerbras, 30 colours of African violets and 25 varieties of rex begonia. I am actually into the steel business and flowers are my hobby,” he says. “I even make my own organic manure with horse and cow dung mixed with red soil and spray the plants to keep them pest free.” Flower lovers can meet Vadivelu at the Lalbagh Flower show on Independence day where he has a stall.

It’s a good feeling to know our garden city still lives up to its reputation and kudos to Lalbagh for encouraging green thumbs for home gardens.