Though both my parents are avid gardeners, I was always a bit dispassionate about it. I do love nature and greenery and have always appreciated pretty gardens, but I guess umma and uppa took up all the space for gardeners in the family. Its only after I moved to this apartment here in Bangalore, that I realized that maybe I too have inherited a teeny weeny part of their interests. I have a fair sized balcony and was growing quite tired of having a concrete jungle for view. One day I spotted a plant-seller ( quite a common site in Bangalore, a man pushing a cart full of roses, jasmine, curry leaves and maybe some ficus and euphorbia plants) on my way back home and bought a jasmine, a tulsi plant and a curry leaf plant. Thus was born the gardener in me. I have just about started and its not yet a "garden", but now I have started tomatoes from seed, Am trying my hand at growing coriander and have also bought a few more flowering plants. I try to procure plants from all sources and on any trip we go to I bring back some kind of cutting, bulb or seed with me. there is a couple of nurseries in the neighbourhood and I have made it a habit to pop in once in a while, sometimes just to drool at the flowers ;-). I plan to blog extensively about my gardening endeavors. Lets see how that goes.
My balcony faces an empty plot and thus there is adequate sunlight, perfect for flowers. I have been collecting and planting a few flowering plants. My source of all gardening and planting info is the Internet and sometimes its so frustrating when you don't know the name of the plants. Today on my usual visit to the neighbourhood nursery, I came across a pretty yellow and pink flowering plant. We had this plant back at home in kerala and I knew it is pretty easy to grow. it grows just about anywhere where there is enough sunlight. I dint buy the plant since I thought they were overcharging for such an easy to grow plant ( Rs 35 per plant ). I can get a plant when I go home next. Once back home I decided to research a bit about the plant, but it was pretty frustrating without knowing the name of the plants. That was when I came across this really amazing website ( more precisely when I typed "easy growing yellow pink flowers" and hit search websites in India on google search ). flowers of india is simply a superlative website for flower and plant lovers. They have documented and catalogued a vast collection of flowers. whats even better is they ve cataloged it based on colours (yellow-green, red-orange etc), as cacti, as fragrant flowers, as vines, in aplphabetical order, what not. Each entry has a picture and the name, botanical name, family name, names is Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam and other regional languages a brief description about the flower and plant. Once you know the name finding growing information on the net is very easy. I found out that the flower I was searching for is called wingpod purslane. It is actually a herb that can be used in salads and is even more nutritious than spinach. who knew ! I found that another common plant I bought recently is called Blue daze and that wonderfully aromatic and strikingly pretty flower that I found years ago in the coconut grove adjacent to my house is a medicinal plant called hill turmeric ( Maramanjal in Malayalam). The bulb I carried back from a recent visit to a hill station is not crocus like I thought but actually a rain lily. phew! that's quite a lot of info for me.
The site has lots of other goodies like lists of nurseries in India, a section on understanding flower parts and botanical names and even an errata for various books on flowers and trees. Do check out their forum for gardening related discussions. It also has a list of photographs of unidentified flowers and if you know what it is , you can contribute by identifying it. An excellent site and a must visit for any horticulturist or amateur gardener in India. Kudos to the flowersofindia team (there is a link to the list of contributors ) for creating such an excellent resource.
P.S : It even promotes an open source software and proudly displays a powered by linux logo. nice !
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