A spring in their steps

Deepkamal Kaur

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, March 2

Name the plant that flowers in spring season and you will find it at the abode of Col Saranjit Singh Sahi (retd) and Harinder Sahi at Friends’ Colony near Wadala Chowk here.

Their corner house, with garden places on three sides, has 40 different varieties of flowers blooming. There are all varieties and colours, including dahlias, sweet peas, marigolds, salvias, dog flowers, gerberas, gladiolus, pansies, petunias, ice flowers, ranunculus, begonias, candytufts, orchids and nasturtium. All blossoming these days, their garden looks so iridescent.

The best part is that Harinder has got them planted using a proper contrast scheme like the red salvias juxtaposed along with the white candytufts. She explains, “I have been fond of gardening since my childhood. After marriage, we used to live in cantonment areas with huge spaces all around. I learnt the art of planting flowers there. Another planning which I do while sowing flowers is that the taller plants like dahlias and sweet peas are grown along the walls where they can easily be provided support and the remaining are layered height-wise in descending order. The ice flower plants, which are the shortest, line up the edges on the inner sides of the lawn areas.”

Meanwhile, Saranjit developed the passion seeing his wife’s keenness. “Together, we have also started to multiply and reproduce some plants. We already had a nice collection of kalanchoe plants but since these look so pretty in the flowering season these days, we started to multiply them by cutting stems and regrowing them and it has worked so well,” he pointed to a whole row of pink, white and orange coloured of this kind.

The Sahis also show a small kitchen garden area on the backside. Pointing to the half-consumed sections of all vegetables, they said, “Here we planted some cauliflowers, spinach, radishes, beet root and cabbages so that we have some organic vegetable of our own.” The garden has a mango and a litchi tree as well amid rows of tall palm and ashoka trees.

The couple spends a larger slice of their retired life in the lawn than inside the four walls. “While in winter season, we keep following the sun shifting our chairs as the light changes its direction, in summers we enjoy sitting in the verandah especially in the mornings and evenings enjoying the cool breeze. Like us, even our grandchildren enjoy frolicking all day in the lawns,” both shared.

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