You may be impressed to hear that this 76-year-old lady grows eight types of Hibiscuses, but she plays it down saying that she once grew 25 varieties! Flowers, fruits, foliage, vegetables — Kalyani Kundu has a finger in every pie and says that her exercise of choice is climbing up and down the terrace tending to her plants. Yes, her knees ache but for the greens, she can overlook it all.
We moved to this house in 1976 and got straight down to gardening. Carrots, Radish, Lady’s Finger, Tomatoes…there are very few plants that we haven’t grown. Even now there are many fruits growing — oranges, Mandarin oranges, Maltas, Mangoes and Dragon Fruits.
My Dragon Fruit plant took more than four years to bear fruit but they are delicious. This plant propagates easily and I have 12 of them now.
Resembling the flower of the Dragon Fruit is the mysterious Night Queen. This one only blooms for a night and when it starts opening up I take it inside the house and watch it for as long as I can.
Other flowers are beautiful in their own right — Dahlia, Petunia, Jui, Bel, Togor and of course Hibiscus and Rose, of which I would have uncountable pots till recently.
Once I had powdered shorsher khol and sprinkled on pots as fertiliser. After a while I saw what I thought were weeds growing out of these pots and yanked them out. But they kept growing back. It’s later that I realised they were Mustard (shorse) plants — dainty green stalks with bright yellow flowers that sway gracefully in the wind.
In the driveway, I keep foliage like Money Plant, Song of India and Wandering Jew. I grow spices like Cardamom and Bay Leaves and medicinal plants like Basab and Thankuni. I have four types of Basils — Sweet Basil, Thai Basil, Krishna Tulsi and Karpur Tulsi. While the others can be added to many a dish, the Sweet Basil leaves I find tasty enough to simply pluck and munch.
I am a woman of many interests. I have run my own businesses and still dabble in the share market. But when it comes to relaxing, gardening is my hobby of choice.
If you have a garden you tend to yourself, send your address and contact number to The Telegraph Salt Lake, 6, Prafulla Sarkar Street, Calcutta 700001 or email to saltlake@abp.in