Launch of Kangra Gardens initiative - Kangra Botanical Garden

Mr Kiran Topiwala aka Lathiwala modern Gandhi (MA Development Practice, Emory University, USA) has worked hard on the Kangra Gardens design.

Kangra Botanical Garden is the central project of Kangra Gardens and aims to embody everything Kangra Gardens stands for. In this way, it help to not only integrate various EduCARE India projects related to biodiversity, nature and environment conservation, environment consciousness, eco-enterprises, botanics, ayurveda and naturopathy for wellness, sustainable eco-tourism, but will also be a home for them.

Kiran, Sudhakar and Om Prakash working on to create a vege patch

Shabnam relaxing after a garden work bout 

The botanical garden has various purposes:

• To regenerate the ecosystem and promote the conservation of biodiversity
• To support community health and build towards food security and nutrition
• To engage people in connecting better with the environment

Mr Ashish, the Pharma in the Farmer mode.  

 

Little Trip to Lajwanti Nursery: a beautiful place, a passionate owner, an amazing help for EduCARE!

January, the season for grafting has come! Back from the holidays, we remembered a visit in October to Lajwanti Nursery, a beautiful nursery in Dharamshala. The owner of the place, very friendly, had offered to show us grafting when the season would come.

We called and were immediately offered to come the day after. Near the police station in Dharamshala, nobody was able to guide us to the nursery. We were a bit lost! After a phone call to the nursery, someone came to pick us up. We arrived at the nursery by 11am.

How nice to see the place again! Lajwanti Nursery is a quiet place, owned by a passionate man who is always very keen to share and discuss about his passion. Plants are everywhere! From the ground to the walls, they are grown on every space available. Here is the ideal for anyone who wants to learn: nearly all the trees are labeled with the local and the Latin name.

It is also well suited if you just want to wander around. The nursery is very beautiful and full of flowers depending on the season. A member of the family is passionate about animals so you can also see some dogs, birds, etc., on your way.

The subject of the day was grafting. Naddi, the village we are working in, is surrounded by the forest. We are planting some trees on a steep slope and the inhabitants would be very interested in having fruit trees. But the fruits that we can find there are really tiny and not very good.

A solution: grafting!

What we could do is use the local trees as stem trees and graft a fruit tree branch on it.

The result: a tree adapted to the area because it is local to it, with branches and big fruits from another tree! To do this you need to pick up two trees of the same family (genius).So we learned how to do this properly and grafted pear on “Kanth”: a local wild pear tree. There is a lot of “Kanth” in Naddi so we can definitely reproduce this. We can also graft Cherry on “Paja”: another local tree.

We should be able to see the result of the grafts in about 2 weeks’ time. We will go there again to see if the graft went well and to buy some trees to be able to begin our grafting process by next year! We hope to be able to bring a community member with us so that she can meet the owner of the place.

The owner is very enthusiastic and will be a permanent help and contact for the organization!

Thank you Lajwanti Nursery and see you soon! 

Louise Brunier and Johnatan de Larminat - France

Forestry Project Managers, Naddi (Himachal Pradesh) 

A Tree Nursery in Chenni!

What an exhausting day today: transporting manure and filling bags and bags and bags…

Bags?

What for?

Well to plant trees!

Deodar, Kant, Ban… They are all ready to be planted in their new home: the Chenni tree nursery. And what a cozy home with its lovely door, its compost place and its little tool rack… here trees will be safe and protected from goats, cows, chicken and dogs. After one year and a half of this happy childhood they will be ready to be transplanted on the slope above Chenni. There they will maintain the soil, which is very unstable, and protect the village from a possible landslide. They will also provide fodder and fuel close to the village, which depends a lot on this wood. 

The wonderful little nursery space built by Johny

But this would never be possible without people to take care of them. Everyone in the Chenni community is aware of the nursery and very welcome to help, but Reena and Varsha in particular take care of the trees. They learn how to prepare the seeds and plant them. And Varsha never comes without her kids: Shanvi and Manvi, always very enthusiastic: “Louissse going field?” usually ask Shanvi when I go down to Chenni. In the picture below, you can see Manvi, very proud of herself: she just pied on the mixed soil! With her, the trees won’t lack nutrient! 

Filling bags activity

We also benefited from the help of the forest department, which gave us lots of information. We practiced the mixing of the soil in nurseries and had a little morning trek to fetch bags.

The nursery will soon extend with a new greenhouse and a bamboo growing area planned for next month. But as nothing goes as it was planned in EduCARE you will soon hear of the new adventures of the forestry team!

Louise Brunier - France

Forestry Project Manager, Naddi (Himachal Pradesh)