This is the story of a garden planted by volunteers and children at the Pudiyador's Urur Kuppam Center. The story of a garden that is growing in beach sand. Where urban food growing experiments go hand in hand with city kids' rediscovery of the origins of food, nutrition and food safety.
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A Garden in the Sand
1. A Garden in the Sand
At
Pudiyador After School Program
Olcott Urur Kuppam,
Elliots Beach, Chennai.
2. I started working with Pudiyador’s afterschool program at Urur
Kuppam soon after Cyclone Nilam, which hit Chennai last October.
So its been a little over a year.
Urur Kuppam is a former fisher colony, now an established slum,
on Elliots Beach in Chennai. Pudiyador, an NGO, runs an afterschool program for children, many of whom are from the kuppam.
When I first went in there, I was terrified at the task before me.
Work with kids under 15 to create a garden, literally in the beach
sand. I wasn’t really sure that the kids wanted a garden. What could
we possibly plant that would grow in beach sand?
Their little backyard was filled with broken pieces of glass, chunks
of concrete, lots of garbage blown over the wall and of course sand,
lots of it. But we started off with lots of energy, enthusiasm and
glimmering hope.
4. Sangeeta Iswaran, Pudiyador volunteer extraordinaire, made a
game of collecting concrete chunks and hurling them towards a
corner. The kids had a blast, and soon enough we had a massive
rock pile where two walls met.
We hauled in sacks of leaf litter from under the trees in SPACES
and created an L shaped bed, bound by green coconuts. “Every
child should first plant a karpuravalli” I heard Dr. Ismail say last
year. So we planted karpuravalli – youngest child included. I was
having great success at home with re-growing stems from palak.
So we planted some of that too. I brought in saplings of tomato,
basil, eggplant, chilly from my garden and we planted them in the
leaf litter base. And watered. And hoped.
5. December 2012:
We cleaned up the
backyard.
We created beds lined
with green coconut
shells – waste collected
from the beachside
vendors. Filled with leaf
litter collected from
under trees. Urban
waste being put to good
use.
6. We started with planting
Karpuravalli (Cuban Oregano)
and moong (whole green
lentil).
Karpooravalli because its
indestructible and grows
quickly.
Moong because it grows
quickly and fixes nitrogen.
When growing with children,
we need to see quick results.
7. We started a nursery in re-cycled containers – juice boxes, plastic
containers, milk sachets, anything the kids could find to grow in.
8. We covered the rock pile with “waste” bio-mass. We
heaped sacks of sugarcane bagasse, and leaf litter
collected from neighbouring streets. We planted a few
things. Nothing grew, because the heat of the rock and
the composting of bio-mass just burnt up everything we
planted. So we waited for the rain and the composting to
be done.
9. Even after we got rid of all the big chunks, the sand was full of
stones and brick. The kids tried to sieve it manually and then we
gave up!
10. Sack Garden, Jan 2012 – Given
the soil and limited space, we
started a sack garden. Planted
some gourds, jasmine and
spinach.
11. Every Wednesday, when I went in for the gardening
session, I was usually mobbed by the kids and
dragged to the garden in the back. Excited cries of
“akka, new leaves”, “ akka, its climbing”. Slowly and
surely things were taking root (literally!).
Many experiments were tried, some very
successful, some dismal failures. Each greeted with
much enthusiasm and effort. And many lessons.
12. I read on the internet about growing in banana stems. A post of
Re-use Sandhai on Facebook generated this stem. We had no
tools, so the kids scooped out the stem with a scissor and
spoons. We tried starting chilly in this. Wrong choice of plant,
because of its long germination. But we did get 4 chilly plants
from here.
13. Jan 2012: The palak (Spinach) started as a small stem in a sack. The
cutting we got from a visit to Solitude farm in Auroville.
15. Climbing on a lattice we created out of waste bamboo
16. October 2013:
Forming a dense
canopy. Jaya (in
the pic) takes
care of the
garden with the
children.
17. Kids took to dumping whatever leftover salad or fruit they ate
for snack on the rock pile. Soon enough we had something
sprouting – it looked like watermelon and what could be
melon. Or was it cucumber? Waiting and watching. And
around this time, Jaya akka was hired at the center. She was
tasked with watering. The garden excited her and she took
care of it. Her green thumb ensured things thrived.
18. The rocky hillock – Now
growing papaya, cucumber,
greens, drumstick. You can
see the chunks of rock
coming through as the leaf
litter and bagasse decompose
19. Sicilian Brinjal – after
several being cooked - we
left this one for seed
saving.
20. We started a new tomato and mustard patch started on the opposite
wall. Since this was large chunks of concrete mixed with sand, we used
a base of cardboard, followed by sugarcane bagasse covered with leaf
waste. Tomatoes are now beginning to fruit.
21. The kids learnt to eat basil
and karpuravalli for colds.
The teachers began to use
the palak and basil in
salads and sundal that
they made for the kids.
Cherry tomato and
manathakali (Black
nightshade) being picked
and eaten off the vine.
The first bud on the aralli
(oleander) was monitored
24*7 and bloomed to
much excitement.
25. But we also have a garden in the sand. One that nourishes the
children in many ways.
26.
27. So today, what does this garden grow… abundant spinach, basil,
mint, karupuravalli, flowers, jasmine. And oh yes, that was
cucumber. Two beautiful long cucumbers, cut, eaten and loudly
announced to anyone who walks in. The spinach is routinely
harvested and sent to the other Pudiyador centers where it is
cooked and served.
The movement is spreading… After
eating the spinach, the children in
the other centers wanted their
own gardens. Archana and I went
into the Ramavaram centers and
the Vannandurai center to help
them start their garden.
Growing … the new patch at Ramavaram
And so continues this story of the Garden in The Sand.
28. For more information please contact:
info@restoregardens.org
or
citykidgardeners@gmail.com
