Regular dose of gardening is a must for this gynaecologist
Tribune News Service
Jalandhar, August 9
A gynaecologist by profession and a mother of two, Dr Harneet Grover is a busy woman. But she makes sure that she is able to spend an hour or two daily in nurturing a collection of 150 potted plants, propagating and replanting them on the balcony of her house on the Link Road here.
Her house has four huge garden areas on the ground floor but she makes sure that her gardener does not enter her balcony garden as she wants to tender it all by herself. Using various drums, jars, drawers, crates, jute bags, waste sewer pipes, dried bamboo stems, used curd containers, bottles, milk mugs etc, she has been multiplying her plants which are seeing a huge growth in the ongoing rainy season.
Her collection of plants includes vegetables, including bitter gourd, chillies etc. and some medicinal herbs such as tulsi, ajwain, arjun etc. but most of them are ornamental plants. Jades are her all time favourite as one can spot them in multiples. Flowering plants such as allamanda, hibiscus, portulaca, jalapa, peace lilies, bougainvilleas and begonia and foliage plants such as a variety of creepers, succulents, kochia bushes, snake plant, spider plant, ferns, monstera, pothos, caladiums, ficus etc have been kept nicely covering most of the floor of her balcony. She has been pruning and twisting various varieties of the foliage plants to various shapes and even attempting to create bonsai out of them.
Dr Harneet has arranged her pots in a systematic manner. The plants grown in bamboo sticks hang down with ropes. The mugs and bottles have been kept in a plastic stand. The window shelves too have creepers hanging down from the pots. The central area has a huge designer pot with five corners. Earthen and ceramic pots in the shapes of snails, car, basket and tortoise too deck up her spaces especially on a stand in the staircase.
She said: “It is not just me but also my children Sehaj (10) and Sidak (7) who help me out with the crafty ideas. They paint various pots and bottles for me. They even help me in re-arranging the pots in a decorative way.”
She credits her husband and urologist Dr Puneet Grover too for the task. “He does photography and all purchases for me. All designer pots and varieties of plants are brought by him from the nurseries. This really peps me up to continue with my passion,” she said.
Her mother-in-law Harvinderjit Kaur with the help of a gardener takes care of the garden areas of the house in the ground floor which have a variety of tall palms, mango, lemon trees, besides swings and garden furniture for the children.
