His study is adorned with pictures of him rubbing shoulders with chief ministers and governors, yet it is the terrace next to the study that keeps Subrato Ghosh busy most of the time. The space has pots, hanging baskets, and a colourful vertical garden mounted on a wall. Be it Dahlias or Roses, Ghosh says flowers are the catalyst to his well-being.
My terrace garden doubles as my club. I’ve given the floor a coat of green paint for a lawn-like ambience and built a blue shed overhead with twinkling lights so it looks like a starry night. The fragrance of Hasnuhana fills the air and I spend hours here after dinner with flowers, that are my muse.
This winter I’ve had a wall of potted Petunias and terrace edges full of Marigold, Salvias, and Pansies. There are some 300 pots with these flowers, and foliage like Song of India and Money Plant. The Hollyhock plants have as many flowers as leaves, maybe even more! There are lots more flowers but I forget their names. Maybe I should find out their names and label the pots next year for the sake of visitors and to teach my grandkids.
This year the focus has been on Dahlias and the produce has been terrific. The flowers grew so huge that they stooped under their own weight! And much to the amusement of my grandkids, the plants grew taller than them.
I retired as the Indian Oil executive director from Assam, where in the refinery colonies, we would have competitions among gardens. I would be the judge. But alongside trophies for the officers, I introduced cash prizes for the gardeners, who do most of the hard work.
I continue to appreciate gardeners but on my terrace, I only let them do the heavy lifting. Things like watering the plants, I do myself. I find this a highly satisfying task that I cannot share.
While I have a soft corner for flowers, I’ve recently started growing fruits like Lemon, Aata, Guavas and Starfruit. I’m sure they’ll be tasty but more than eating them, I want to see them hanging from the branches.
Kept on the ground floor, my flowers always go missing. I’ve seen senior citizens pluck them and it’s awkward telling them off. Also, stealing flowers isn’t really stealing, is it? I’m sure those who take them offer them to deities. So the win-win solution is to keep flowers on the terrace railings so passerbay can enjoy from afar. As for the ground floor, I keep foliage there now, which no one is tempted to steal.
(As told to Brinda Sarkar)