I am neither a farmer by birth nor by profession. I do not live in a village with acres of land for farming. I live in a city, an urban jungle, where space is limited. But my love and passion for farming began in this very urban jungle, when I first experienced some impeccable gardening skills during my five year stay in Ganga Tower. Being born and brought up in Panorama, road no.3, a beautiful society surrounded by golf course greenery, in some way added into my genes my love for greenery.
Our society – Panorama went into redevelopment about ten years ago. We moved to Kritika and for the next five years experienced some wonderful community living there. But it was not until our next move to Ganga Towers that my journey of growing vegetables and herbs began.
We were the first family to move into the new Panorama in 2019 and were still settling in when the pandemic in 2020 brought our lives to a standstill. With work from home becoming the norm, I decided to use the little extra time I had (well the absence of daily commute does help) and put my gardening skills to some use and decided to experiment with a vegetable and herb garden on our balcony. A year on, we have successfully grown basil, capsicum, palak, beans, toriya, nimbu, coriander, mirchi, tomatoes, papaya and bhindi in our terrace garden.
Excited with the success of my vegetable garden, I wanted to replicate the same in our society. Luckily the proposal was approved and the management committee agreed to give me a small piece of land on our boundary facing the golf course. And since then my heart was set on growing a Pano (as we fondly call our society) vegetable garden.
This however was not a one man’s job. Fortunately, the society members were very supportive and many volunteered to help me plan the whole set up. We decided to encourage and involve every member of our society: toddlers, teenagerers, adults and senior citizens.
Panorama vegetable garden was officially inaugurated on the 26th of January 2021, Republic Day. Since then, during the entire lockdown period this has been a source of positive news that brings cheer across all age groups and also supplies us with organic fresh vegetables and fruits such as cluster beans, brinjal, bitter gourd, cauliflower, tomatoes, basil, palak, methi, papaya and banana which are distributed equally amongst all the residents.
Whenever we have a visitor to our society, we proudly show our vegetable garden which is unique to Pano . All this has been possible only because of the support and enthusiasm of the Pano residents and children.
