A nursery at Kutchery Market in Ranchi. (Hardeep Singh)

Your terrace or balcony garden can be your grand home spa.

Grandma’s beauty tips — “hibiscus is good for hair, turmeric and aloe vera for skin, neem for everything” — are a roaring global industry, with costly herbal lotions, potions and capsules. But you can save money, rid yourself of chemicals, including parabens, and gain glowing skin and thick, dandruff-free hair by growing these plants at home, courtesy Ranchi’s Kutchery Market.

Plant sellers of Kutchery Market are stocking up on a range of plants known for healing and beautifying powers.

As Manoj, a plant-seller at Kutchery Market, said: “College girls often come asking for saplings of neem, aloe vera, turmeric and so on. Earlier, we only sold flowering or decorative plants. These days, we keep saplings with medicinal and beauty value as well.”

“Plants used for beauty treatments are more in demand,” said Umesh, another seller.

He points out the whole range on offer. There’s tulsi (holy basil or Ocimum tenuiflorum), mint (Mentha spicata), rose (genus Rosa), lavender (Lavandula angustifolia), calendula (Calendula officinalis), hibiscus (Hibiscus rosa-sinensis), neem (Azadirachta indica), lemon grass (Cymbopogon citratus), aloe vera (genus Aloe) and turmeric (Curcuma longa).

He added that saplings of these plants sold well in pots. “Everyone is shifting to flats now, so backyard gardens are shrinking. Plus, Ranchi is losing out on vacant space where trees such as, say, neem grew wild earlier. Potted plants are the only solution,” Umesh said.

Even beauty parlour owners are heading for Kutchery Market.

“If a client has recurring acne, I advise her to put on turmeric and neem. There’s nothing better than home-grown plants and Kutchery Market is a life-saver. I’ve bought hibiscus from there,” Sunita of Gloria Beauty Parlour, Kanke Road, said. She added saplings were cheaper than herbal beauty products.

“Wild varieties of hibiscus, mint, rose, tulsi, lemon grass, aloe vera, calendula, lavender come for Rs 30 each. Few variants come for Rs 35 to Rs 60, depending on size,” informed Manoj. Apart from a one-time investment of pots and gardening implements such as a digging fork, there’s a small recurring cost of soil and manure.

“If you are house-proud, you’d love to maintain the pretty plants in pots,” Sunita smiled.

Arpita Choudhury, a St Xavier’s College student, has the last word. “Kutchery plant-sellers help us save pocket money. Earlier, we wasted big bucks on chemical beauty products. Now we go the natural way,” she said.

Are you inspired to grow your beauty products? Tell ttkhand@abpmail.com