Baripada: A furniture showroom owner by profession and a terrace gardener by passion. Meet Dharani Kumar Dey of Odisha’s Baripada, who has a rooftop garden where he grows over 40 varieties of organic vegetables and leafy greens.
Passion for plants and trees and shrinking space for cultivation due to the rise in concrete structures made Dey turn his terrace into a rooftop garden. Dey managed to build an innovative organic farming garden on his rooftop with vegetables, fruits and flowers.
He has been growing a kitchen garden for the last 12 years on his rooftop. His rooftop garden houses nearly 40 types of plants including medicinal plants, herbs, flowers, trees and vegetables. A 4 to 5 feet tall coconut tree, full of fruits is a major attraction.
“I started rooftop farming in 2010. Initially, I started with planting flowers. Then I expanded it to other fruits and vegetables. There is a wide variety now,” said Dey who belongs to a farmer’s family.
Potatoes, onion, garlic, bitter gourd, brinjal, bottle gourd, tomato, radish and coriander leaves are all produced in his green patch. He has successfully grown mango, lemon, papaya, sapodilla (chikoo) and plum plants on the roof, Dey told ANI.
How much does he spend on the garden? Well, he has used discarded plastic buckets, plastics and broken water tanks to grow plants on his roof.
Preferring to go organic, Dey has created his own herbal medicine, a mix of fresh cow dung, cow urine, jaggery and water, to increase the fertility of his soil and prevent diseases.
He divides his time between showroom and gardening and finds peace in each job. Dharani tends to his plants in the morning and goes to his furniture showroom at Baripada Gandhi Market in the evening.
Popular as nature lover in his neighbourhood, Dey does not sell the produce and says it meets his family’s daily requirement of vegetables. “I do not sell it. Sometimes our guests take it,” he said.
