It's been almost two weeks since we moved to our own home in Ahmedabad. It has a lovely terrace on the top floor and an L-shaped balcony on the bottom. We selected it primarily for the open space, which would allow us to continue gardening.
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| Drawing room balcony |
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| Continuation of drawing room balcony around the corner |
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| Terrace balcony view |
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| Entrances to the terrace |
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| Storage nook |
Over the years, we have planned a few things for the space we have. For instance, we know we want to grow vegetables in raised garden beds. Other ideas came (and are still coming) to us as we live here. The master bedroom has french windows with an overhang roof. This would be ideal to train a fragrant creeper like jasmine.
However, all big things must start small. In this case, with two plants.
There are two large nurseries close by. Both deal with commercial clients who landscape, so had a lot of feature plants. The collection was good, but some of the trees were a bit overwhelming for a small garden. Two plants are worth mentioning though.
The first nursery had a Thai mango tree. It was about 3 feet tall and already had ripe mangoes hanging off the branches. It was ideal for a terrace garden.
The second nursery had a Karaunda (करोंदा) tree. It reminded me of the tree in Ghaziabad. The plucking of the vegetable (fruit?) was hard as the tree is quite thorny. Preparing it is even harder as it has to be cooked well enough such that the seed pod in the middle can be slid out. The vegetable is extremely sour and not to everyone's palate. Yet, it is synonymous with my childhood. Sadly, it won't grow on a terrace.
Having browsed through all that, we picked up one plant each from each nursery. From the first one, we bought a Money plant.
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| Money plant |
From the second one, we bought a Curry leaf plant.
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| Curry leaf |
Now onto bigger and larger projects!
