This monsoon, bring a bit of the forest into your garden
The monsoon is a good time to make sure our gardens can grow a little wild, perhaps a little weedy. Here are a few small ways you can do so
In the monsoon, they seem bigger, wilder, more ferocious.
They have a kind of hunger, sharper angles, and needle points that are like rows of teeth. They have a new-found presence that takes up space rather than being part of the background.
When it rains, it’s the time for the quietest parts of nature to take centre stage. It’s the rise of the plants.
As water tumbles down, plants arrow upwards to receive the bounty of rainwater. Grasses become tall and jagged, more like spikes than an underfoot carpet. Seedlings rush up with a giddy speed—their rate of growth in the monsoon is unparalleled to any other time of the year. Single centimetres of soil harbour seeds which sprout forth like they are listening to plant rock music; and what was dusty yesterday turns into rich loam.
This monsoon, I’ve kept a couple of pots free as a kind of experiment. Every day, I allow rainwater to gush over the pots. I’d like to see what will spring forth, in the ripe, humid air, and the windy gusts that often carry seeds.
Also Read How extreme heat casts a shadow on the Paris Olympics
First come the grasses. A knot of thick, wild grass emerges in emerald slashes. That soft emerald will soon become a resilient bottle green. A neon-green sapling slowly unfurls: a tiny thing which will one day become a giant neem tree. A bird might have dropped the seed in the pot, after eating the fruit. Then there is a thistle plant that pushes for space on the pot—most would consider it a weed, but not all weeds are bad. And then, there is a patch of darkness. A plant with scratchy leaves which give off a faint minty smell. This is the Lantana camara, one of the worst invasive species on earth. Given a chance, Lantana will take over acres of gardens, forests, abandoned plots and grasslands. It should be rooted out from every garden.
The experiment thus provides important insight: there are both native and invasive plants around us, and they vie for space. Usually, invasive species are foreigners that have no true competition in the places they invade. They take over swathes of land and water—like the vilayati kikar and water hyacinth, respectively—with other plants getting wiped out.
This monsoon is a good time then to make sure our gardens can grow a little wild, perhaps a little weedy, but not as a refuge for invasive species. Find native seeds and throw them liberally over soil. If you have space, plant mangoes and amaltas. The mangoes are on our plates, and the amaltas are turning into sturdy, burnished bean-like pods on trees, which are full of seeds.
Collect rainwater in old buckets and watering cans, and use it to water any plants that are ailing or indoors. Rainwater is like plant elixir—a dose of rainwater can make leaves shoot out. Add mulch or compost, but only the kind that is already ready. If at this time you put fresh tea leaves or dead flowers (otherwise a good source of nutrition), you might end up with fungal growth.
Finally, take a look at plants you thought were dying. If they are indeed dead, they will remain dormant. But with some rainwater, many seemingly dead plants will throw out shoots. Sago palms, giloy vines, and dead-looking bamboo will often come back to life with the rains. And look harder at the soil. There might likely be a mushroom or two popping out from the base of dead wood, bamboos, or twigs. There will be many saplings, known and unknown, emerging—with their arms out like in a dance.
Some of my favourite memories of forests are during the rains. For example, when it rains, the forests of Kerala have an impenetrable but reflective quality. Everything is shining with moisture, and many things are bright with tropical colours. Glory lilies glisten in raw, primal colours—luscious red and eye-popping yellow. Pink and green wild turmeric blossoms under trees. In the Himalaya, ferns emerge in thick tufts, and mushrooms clamber up slopes in vivid, loopy colours. In drier scrub forests, seedlings begin taking root, and browns get touched with greens. Mango seedlings come out of the soil—a velvety green-red in their infancy. (Two days ago, I took langra mango seed, and placed it in a pot. I am waiting for the plant to wake, so it can rake the soil with its ambitious roots.)
Serving the woods are monsoonal streams. Many if not all forests are likely to have streams gurgling through them in the rains. In Delhi’s Ridge forest, I have listened to laughing sounds—the chuckling of different kinds of frogs sitting in the streams or next to them. Frogs love water and they seem delighted in the rain. They will sit out in the rain, getting wet with a seriousness that can only be informed by joy. The male Indian bullfrog turns neon yellow in this season—a fun, greenish yellow, rather than an ornate golden. It’s the yellow of whiteboard markers and T-shirts from teenage enthusiasm. He waits for females, making a deep, thrumming call by swelling his (now bright blue) vocal sacs.
Perhaps we want to take the germane, joyous energy of the monsoonal forest into our gardens, hoping their giddy chlorophyll will rub us with happy hormones. So while we cut forests for tourism, ports, religious processions and housing, we want a sliver of their tree spirit in our gardens. “Now the coastal forest is largely gone; the flatlands are mostly farms and fisheries. But humans long for green, so the trees make their way back to the cities in ceramic pots and roadside verges, climbing the trellis of every back alley unabated," writes Jessica J. Lee in her 2019 book Two Trees Make a Forest.
But there are manicured gardens and there are mad gardens. The latter are more interesting; they can provide space for natives, wild flowers and a smattering of chaos. Wild plants are often like both a hug and a blow. A native creeper like vallaris will produce the most beautiful white flowers, but may not look as neat as you like. The ronjh tree will give you a sprinkling of yellow fairy dust from its little flowers, but the tree itself has thorns.
I suspect the monsoon is the time for understanding that plants have hunger and a dogged ferocity to live. And they aren’t always quiet: as they grow in leaps, its like they are singing.
If we listen more closely, perhaps we can also open our gardens out to wilder antecedents—the native acacia tree with thorns, the vajradanti shrub that will survive drought, the verdant fern that needs little except to be picked from the subcontinent rather than from foreign shores. Plants break boundaries of tameness and wildness. But because we see plants every day, we should pay more attention to the resilience of the (usually unwanted) untidy plant. It should be okay to sacrifice neatness to bring a bit of the forest to the garden.
Meanwhile, I wait for the mango to root, even as the seed keeps me on tenterhooks: an annual face-off where I learn that despite everything, trees keep their own time.
Neha Sinha is a conservation biologist and author of Wild And Wilful: Tales of 15 Iconic Indian Species.
Also read: Saving water is an alarm call we must heed every day
