He adorned his school premises with succulents

PK Jaiswar

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, October 5

A noted Punjabi poet, an educationist and a numismatist, Dev Dard dons many hats. Not only this, he is also known to have a gardening fetish. A principal of a private school, his love for plants is such that he has adorned whole of the school premises with several varieties of cactus and nolina or ponytail palm plants.

He is now planning to establish a greenhouse at the rooftop of his sprawling school complex where he would house unique plants, including cactus and succulents. At present, he has over 500 varieties of different species.

“Unlike other ornamental plants that are much in demand, cacti demand lesser attention. I water them once or twice a week. They are quite hard and resilient and need less water,” he says. Giving a word of caution, Dard says it needs to be ensured that water retention in the pot does not take place as it could harm the root of cacti and damage the plants.

Dev Dard also uses grafting method for propagating the plants, besides stem cutting.

He has a collection of notocactus, mammillaria, melocactus bahiensis, pachypodiums, ferocactus harrare, ferocacuts latispinus, echinocactus grusonii, astrophytum, paper spine cactus, agaves and gymnosium.

Though, these plants do need not much care, we change its soil every year and replace it with soil enriched with nutrients. “I use the soil mixed with cow dung manure or vermicompost, bone meal, leaf manure along with bone and hoof manure,” he said.

Drawing inspiration from late Dr Karam Singh, an Orthopaedic surgeon of the Government Medical College, Dev Dard grew passionate about thorny plants. “He was the first to have a collection of cactus plants. He used to hold meetings with other cactus lovers of Punjab and I used to attend that meetings,” he pointed out.

Dard is also a proud owner of around 250 plants of Nolina Palm or Pony tail Palm.