SPACES featured in “Kungumam Thozhi” March Edition,2014!!

SPACES was featured in popular tamil magazine “Kungumam Thozhi” . Very proud and thankful to Vaidehi madam who was patient enough to interview and get to know us and giving us the chance to tell our story.

Rendezvous with Rotary Club

SPACES had the wonderful opportunity to talk at the meeting conducted by the Rotary Club of Madras East. All thanks to Mr.Bharadwaj and Mr.Gopalakrishnan for introducing us to the world of the elite. Shainika had given a fine talk about the urban life crisis and ways to re-track the severed connection with nature.

She equipped her talk with a lot of informative methods and ideas about accommodating gardens within small space. There were lots of questions thereafter regarding different herbs and other common myths about having gardens at your own home.

SPACES was thrilled to make a presentation at this meeting and looks forward to more ties with the Rotary club.

 

Revisit to Red Hills

Sixteen days had gone by since the group of twelve volunteers had battled it out in the terrace to equip a vegetable garden for the kids at the Shelter at Red Hills. Tentatively, we arrived at the gates , the children were busy attending Sunday Mass, and we went straight into the terrace , eager to see the results of our handicraft. There were so many doubts .. did the structures still stay strong, had the saplings grown for all the veggies, had the pandal structure stood the test of the winds.

The sight which was awaiting us was one which would rise our spirits by the double.

The children had taken care of the seeds like they were their own, everything looked healthy and was growing fine. All the structures were intact and pretty strong. happy and content, we set about with transplanting some of the tomatoes , brinjals and the chillies into separate containers thereby avoiding crowding and stunted growth.

We also removed the plastic covering underneath the bigger pots,afraid of stagnation of water.We gave them instructions to keep changing the position of the containers slightly every 2 weeks.

 

By the time we were done transplanting, the kids were done with their prayers too and were eager to come up, curious to see what the annas and the akkas were up to. We taught them how to transplant , how to water without doing excess , and how to keep cuttings of plants and propagate them like indian borage, perandai  etc

One little fellow followed my suit and started watering the plants and the rest followed.

Soon the two hours just flew by and it was time to leave and we had time for one last photo session.

 

 

Until next time. 🙂

Not Just Another Workshop!!

SPACES was fortunate enough to be invited to conduct a session on Ornamental Gardening. It was indeed a unique way of blending both the organic methods of farming and the utilization of the space available in cities. Yes , space is the most important constraint even for garden enthusiasts and that proves to be a block for setting up gardens. Sometimes this block is less physical and more of an immediate rejection without exploring the available possibilities.

This very novel effort on educating the audience on such options was conducted by SUBHAM in association with Kasturba Residents Association. The organizers did a brilliant job by roping in notable groups working toward similar goals.

There was a talk by Ms.Lakshmi Sriram madam who explained about the little details that most of us tend to worry about and these were the precise information that would go a long way in producing better, healthier produce .. and that too at our own backyard! And then the famous organic shop – Restore‘s owner Mr.Anantu gave an inspiring talk about food security and there were some innovative products, specifically Eco-pots ,designed by Mr.Vijayan and his daughter. Not to forget the informative talk about different indigenous herbs and their uses.

SPACES gave a presentation on the terrace and other recent technologies coming up among which Hydroponics and Aquaponics were topics covered. Other than that we also gave a general idea on the important things to take care while having a roof garden and the concept of vertical planters. The topics were well received and the audience were full of questions later and hopefully many would want to take up the same.  Space saving techniques have become the order of the day and we were just too happy to share our knowledge.

All these aspects added quite a bit of dimension to the normal format. And in the afternoon session, we had group discussions with each of the resource,talking about their ideas or products or basically clearing all general doubts.

The whole atmosphere ,no doubt, presented a very healthy discussion platform for creative garden enthusiasts to get more and more of a clear perspective. A great initiative by the community and SUBHAM. SPACES hopes to see next time larger audiences and much more resources coming and putting forward their ideas and innovations.

Herbal Garden for CTTE

First impressions when we entered the college – “does this place really need any work?” . Imagine the greenest campus you know of! And imagine it tastefully maintained and designed. That is the college we visited. Chevalier T.Thomas Elizabeth College for women. A college that can boast that it is completely independent and self-sufficient.

As we moved around the campus, we found out they had already taken the initiative of setting up a kitchen garden. The images of the ladies finger growing out there is still fresh in our minds. Very healthy looking and well looked after. So we were not at all worried about the herbal garden that we were going to set up. In fact they already had a few planted.. like aloes and perandai, insulin plants. But they did need a bit managing, since they were all placed pretty randomly.

And then, in spite of a few glitches on starting the project, the management had full faith in us, and our laborers did a fine job in completing the garden full of 20 odd varieties of herbs replete of name boards with information, uses and local names.

SPACES thanks the management for giving us the opportunity and for taking the initiative of maintaining a green campus and going the extra mile.