The gallerist and her green thumb

This tree should give guavas in three years… This one’s a cross between lime and lemon… This is adulsa or Malabar Nut, a medicinal plant. Locals eat the leaves raw to tackle severe congestion, but I prefer steaming its small, white flowers with parijat (night jasmine) as a remedy… I found this tapioca growing aimlessly on the road... Did you know that Salem has the biggest tapioca factory that produces sabudana?... Elaichi bananas need 60 per cent sunlight, that’s why I grew them under a larger tree…”

We’re shadowing Shalini Sawhney in Alibaug, at her lush garden attached to her thriving art gallery The Guild. She’s also quite the seasoned botanist. At exhibition previews at The Guild, apart from relishing on the authentic Gomantak cuisine she serves from Alibaug’s popular Sanman restaurant, visitors love the informal tour Sawhney gives them of her garden and the permission to pocket a few herbs and fruits. “Most of these are drought-resistant plants and require almost no water or care,” says the gallerist. Though, head-to-toe in cotton with a straw hat to combat the blistering summer heat, she’s quite enthusiastic to give this writer a walk-through of the trees, plants, herbs and exotic flora dotting her one-acre trellis garden plot. “It gives me great pleasure to plant trees and, if possible, watch them grow. I’ve made maalis plant saplings on road dividers, in parks, colony compounds, but quietly because permissions are hard to come by.” Plucking a fleshy, bell-shaped yellow tecoma flower and expertly banging its bottom on her palm for a loud pop. “I learnt this trick as a kid from my uncle in Delhi,” she chuckles. She encourages you to pluck, rub and smell the curry leaves, oregano, lemongrass, Italian basil and amaranth – their exceptionally strong aromas do surprise. 

Sawhney studied geology and botany at The Institute of Science, Mumbai, followed up with a course in zoology, but realised she was interested in arts over dissecting rats. In 1997, she set up The Guild in Mumbai, but had to relocate to Alibaug in 2014 when exorbitant rents forced her to close her previous exhibition space for a year. Best accessed by ferry from Mumbai and a rickshaw or bus from Mandwa jetty, The Guild now sits on a museum boom in Alibaug. The Karmakar and Dashrath Patel museums are close by, the Piramals are set to open one, and another entity has tied up with international architecture firms for a private museum. Amidst these stands Sawhney’s no-frills cottage-like enterprise. “I wanted it earthy and to melt into the background,” says Sawhney, also the architect of the gallery and garden, she built on what was once a barren, paddy field. 

Over the years, Sawhney has devised unusual chutneys, juices, green teas and sherbets using her garden produce. Blended with water, the hexagonal starfruit from her garden becomes a tangy, detox drink, or a tart chutney when mixed with green chillies, half a spoon of sugar, salt, coriander and mint. She sours her tea with the fallen flowers of the pomegranate tree. While local women pluck the leaves of the Indian bael tree every Monday to offer to Shiva, the pulp when boiled in water, helps control diabetes, she says. She turns the large, white flowers, leaves and French bean-like pods of the Sesbania grandiflora or hummingbird tree into vegetables. Regular to her diet are the leaves of her sweet potato shrub, which are “more nutritious than spinach, though yet to be commercially exploited”. The Moringa oleifera or drumstick, both the local and the sweet Coimbatore variety is her perennial favourite. “The flowers and leaves can be eaten as vegetables; the leaves boiled with your chai, or dried, powdered and stored in bottles for a year, and then spoonfuls of it can be mixed in food as moringa is extremely nutritious.

Even the World Health Organisation (WHO) recommends planting it in famine and poverty-stricken areas.” While Sawhney plans to add coffee and black pepper to her collection of flavouring agents, she loves distributing saplings of black cardamom among Alibaugkars and Nature’s Wadi, two WhatsApp groups for like-minded green thumbs in Alibaug who exchange plants, seeds and cuttings, and are working at water harvesting and management.Some experiments – making the passion fruit and Cestrum nocturnum or raat-ki-rani snake up the banyan tree for fruit-flower-vine hybrid – have worked wondrously, others – creating a hole-in-the-ground lotus pond in the garden – flopped as crabs relished on its plastic exterior.

Undeterred, Sawhney trawls Google every Sunday night to study new plants, new ways to grow greens and stay off weeds. “Earlier, I picked up books on agriculture from the Ratanshis shop [an agro-horticultural store] in Byculla, though these were only in Marathi.” She loves Alibaug for its pollution-free environs and beautiful mornings and evenings. But it’s gardening, sometimes eight hours at a stretch, only breaking for a short lunch, is what she loves to do the most.