Bhubaneswar: From the world’s costliest Miyazaki mango to a rare lotus variety with 1,000 petals, one can spot at least 400 exotic collection of plants at the Sambalpur residence of engineer, Subrat Nath. A passionate gardener, Nath has turned his home into a mini-forest that flaunts rare flowers and fruit plants, like rainbow sugarcane, hydrangea, water lilies, 20 varieties of adenium, 10 types of Orchids, besides others.
People in his locality—Samablpur’s Budharaja area in Odisha— often call his home, spreading over 4,000 sq ft, as a ‘mini forest.’ He has transformed the ground floor of his house into a garden and shaped up terrace and balcony gardens as well. To control the temperature, he keeps the saplings for two to three months in a small greenhouse that he crafted.
He developed a knack for gardening as a child, inspired by his parents. “We used to live in a quarter, where both my parents would engage in gardening. This inspired and influenced both me and my sister and thus I took up gardening,” he said.
Nath wakes up early in the morning to water and feed his plants with manure every day before leaving for work. On his return from office, he rushes to the garden to take care of his plants. He believes natural fertilizers are sufficient for plants and thus uses cow dung only.
In 2020, he had even received the ‘Prakritri Bandhu’ award from the Odisha government for his contribution to horticulture. Besides gardening, Nath—who is employed with a multinational company as an engineer—is also a passionate wildlife photographer. He has also started conserving sparrows and other birds in his ‘mini-forest.’ In the balcony of his house, one can find the ceiling to be occupied by earther pots and brooms, making those the perfect shelter for the sparrows.
Two years back, he had also developed the lily pool at the Nandankanan Botanical Park along with the forest department.
