GREEN PATH: Boring Road resident Ambari Rehman tends to her plants in her terrace garden. Pictures by Jai Prakash

Patna, Sept. 2: Jaya Bachchan in the 1975 comedy, Chupke Chupke, had a botany class right at home, with a sprawling garden full of flowers. In 2011, the booming apartment culture in our city has left us with little opportunities to indulge in this passion.

However, limited choices do not limit options here. If the concrete jungle takes away our ground, we move to the sky, err roof.

Many nature lovers in the state capital have chosen to not relegate their love for nature to artificial flowers but have turned to terrace gardening. One such nature lover is Boring Road resident Ambari Rehman. She has turned her roof into a garden that is home to almost 500 varieties of plants, including 50 varieties of flowers, 50 varieties of crotons, 35 varieties of fruits and vegetables like custard apple, chiku, mango, cherry, apple, pomegranate, grape, lemon, cucumber, gourd, blackberry, cauliflower and guava.

Ambari said: “Lack of space and mushrooming apartments made me realise the shrinking greenery around us. It has been 12 years now since I started to grow plants on my terrace.”

“I can’t live without my plants as gardening is not just my hobby but my passion. I go to different nurseries across the city to look for new plants. I even go to far and remote places to look for the best quality of soil and manure for my plants. Space is definitely a constraint but then, when it comes to my plants, I can’t stop myself from caring for them,” she added.

Rashi Verma’s terrace at Vaishnavi Apartment in Kankerbagh is home to more than 200 flowers and vegetables, including chillies, lemon, brinjal, lady’s finger, cauliflower and others. Asked why she plants vegetables, Rashi said: “Just see the rising price of vegetables. To cut down on daily expenditure, I decided to plant these vegetables.”

She added: “I have always been a nature lover. I grew up in a large house and we had a garden, so there was no space constraint to hamper my love of planting flowers. But now rising population and demand for space has left us with small houses, where we lose out on gardening.” However, Rashi believes little can stop nature lovers like her from working out of limited options. “This concrete set-up can never be a disadvantage for us, as we know how to utilise a small space to carry on with our love for plants.”

Ved Prakash sells plants at his nursery at Mauryalok Complex. On the impact of the booming apartment culture on his business, he said: “People think that residents’ interest to have their own gardens has gone down because of lack of space. But that is not true. Recently, the number has increased with the demand for decorative plants on a high. These days, fruits and vegetables can also be grown in small clay pots. I sell around 15-20 plants on an average a day. When the demand is high, the number touches 30 as well.”