In an effort to conserve urban biodiversity and create awareness about local plants, schools in the city are creating their own vertical gardens despite space constraints. What is interesting is that the gardens are being created by children who are being entrusted with the responsibility of nurturing these plants.
The initiative by the schools is an effort of Brihati Foundation that has approached several both government and private schools. They are training students for creating vertical gardens. The instructors talk to students about the importance of growing plants and how to maintain them.
They focus on local plants and those with medicinal values including shatavari, chanothi, parijatak, damvel, tulsi, barmasi, fudina, desi mehndi, rajnigandha and more. The foundation also provides the students who participate in the initiative with the necessary flower beds, manure, soil and seeds and as of now the project has seen a good survival rate of plants.
Ashok Rawat, principal of the Rakhial Hindi School No 1 said that they have created a small vertical garden of 30 pots. "It is small in number but each of the 30 pots had been assigned to each of the 30 students of class 8 who took part in the project. The instructors from the foundation came and involved the students in how to go about caring for them," said Rawat.
He said since despite being in the eastern part of the city, the school is quite spacious and perhaps in the future they can explore the possibility of a horizontal garden. "Almost all the plants planted in our school are medicinal plants. This way the students also get to learn about such plants and how they can be used otherwise urban children don't get to know much about the value of such plants," said Rawat.
THE FOUNDATION
- Brihati Foundation has tied up with 19 schools so far and have distributed more than 1255 seeds of various plants.
- They are training students for creating vertical gardens. The instructors talk to students about the importance of growing plants and how to maintain them.
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