A gift from nature’s basket

Environment enthusiasts braved the sizzling summer heat to learn, share and take-away ‘nature’ as return gifts on the Saturday, at an event organised by Goethe-Zentrum Hyderabad welcoming the International Earth Day.

Exciting workshops, exhibition, films, eco-friendly stalls, with a dash of music brought cheers to all those lamenting ‘where’s our-plant heading to?’. The event looked very promising with many ‘green warriors’ displaying their eco-friendly products which included eatables, handlooms, lady’s accessories, earthen cookware, medicinal plants, vertical gardens, light-weight collapsible and sturdy plant-holders, aesthetic and vegetable-friendly cloth storage bags and many more!

Excited visitors and ‘eco-freaks’ flooded the place to learn more about carbon footprint, how to implant their lives with more greenery, and how to instigate and inspire the younger to ‘go-green’.

Gamlaa.com (who initiated vertical gardens workshop), online nursery co-founder Shree Sakhare says “After four-five years of corporate life, my partner Rohit & I were quite fascinated by entrepreneurship and wanted to start some innovative venture of our own. They Inspired by the Coffee shop’s beautiful ambiance, surrounded by lots lots of plants around, and one fine November 2011 evening, they stumbled upon the idea of an online nursery and they were quite excited about it. To check the feasibility they personally met a lot of plant enthusiasts, nurseries and Horticulture Consultants in Hyderabad. During this research, they saw a genuine gap in the existing eco-system where the availability of poor quality plants in road side nurseries, lack of plant information to the customer and logistics hassles a customer has to go through to bring plants to their home were the major challenges faced by customers. Adding to this, the idea of gifting a living plant also fascinated them a lot.

After about four-five months of thorough research, they left their cushy corporate jobs in August 2012 and started working towards building Gamlaa.com. The first step was to bring around 100 different plants in their small office and let the idea of having plant all around them absorb in their mind. Spending entire days in nursery farms learning varieties of plants, their seasons, their care, etc. followed up by lot of online study of plants and various scientific researches done on how to improve indoor air quality using plants.

Backed up with all this knowledge, www.gamlaa.com went live on 26th January 2013 and since then they have delivered more than 50,000 plants to individuals as well as corporates. Currently Gamlaa has wide variety in plants, pots, bonsai trees, etc. Their services are live in Hyderabad &Secunderabad region and they are planning phase wise expansion in other major cities.” Check out their unique ‘terranuims’ which are customised to bring any ambiance you wish for-in a bottle!

While Gamlaa taught how to make own vertical gardens, Jeeva Organics set up light-weight containers especially for those living in apartments where space is a rare commodity. One may contact 9493428642 or www.jivaorganics.in for more details. Another interesting eco-friendly product was cloth vegetable storage bag(s) from Ipshita Roy Chowdary, an engineer by profession who took a sabbatical to bring up her kid and stumbled upon this invention.

Says Ipshitha, “vegetables breathe and stay fresh in moist cloth bags; I’ve seen this after using them for about two years. This was because I was tired of picking slimy leaf vegetables stored in plastic bags! I designed my own cloth bag that kept vegetables crisp, often for several days which a plastic bagdint”

“I decided to go full-fledged with this and started keeping my cloth bags for sale(under the name ‘Evolve’), which are available in three sizes- Small: 9 x 9 inches; Medium: 12 x 10.5 inches; Large: 14 x 12 inches,” she added.

These bags specifically designed to maintain optimal humidity and air flow keeping fruits and vegetables fresh and healthy. They replace single-use plastic bags. We have to variations: Drawstring closure and cinched elastic.

Aahaar Kuteer’s (Begumpet) lip-smacking and nutritious savouries made of millets and just 20% maida were show-stealers. Bright handlooms from Karghaa had lovely Pochampally weaves.

Some interesting herbs and medicinal plants were also displayed among which one St Thomas bean -Entadapursaetha-pod attracted eye-balls due to its huge size and its medicinal value.

Also known as Tikka Tivva in Telugu this woody creeper is native of Rampachodavaram products and its pods are extensively used to treat arthritis.