Community garden group in Chennai organises seed and sapling exchange event

A community garden in Kasturba Nagar is meeting a trifecta of needs for participants — experimental gardening, fitness and social engagement

Beady-eyed and opportunistic, animals rarely miss a trick. Their eyes fall on spaces that our own ignore. In a derelict state, the open spaces on the premises of the Kasturba Nagar Community Hall caught those of bandicoots. Bandicoots go it alone. Each had made itself a snug burrow. Eviction notices were placed next to these burrows a month-and-a-half ago when a bunch of resident-volunteers from Kasturba Nagar started reclaiming the space, replacing unplanned unruly vegetation with a planned edible garden.

“Any kind of animal life is fine, but what was unacceptable was the construction debris and the overgrown vegetation that had taken over much of the open space. As we worked the soil, we found small plastic material mixed with it,” says Samyuktha Kannan, a resident of Kastuba Nagar and a member of the core team of volunteers driving Kasturba Nagar Community Garden (KNCG).

(On September 19, from 3.30 to 5.30 p.m, KNCG would hold its biggest event since inception, organising Seed & Sapling Exchange on the premises of the Kasturba Nagar Community Hall).