The Shapoorji Pallonji Native Biodiversity Park will transport you to a time long past, where the untamed wilderness ruled. And it’s not too far away from the urban sprawl: it’s near near the Teenvira Dam, in Mandwa on the Mumbai-Alibag Road.
The 1.25-acre park hosts over 540 species of plants endemic to the Western Ghats including Elaeocarpus ganitrus , also known by its common name Rudraksha, and the Santalum album , which is sandalwood. And you can spot monkeys, squirrels and rabbits there as well.
It is a labour of love by Dr. Rashneh N. Pardiwala and her team at the Centre for Environmental Research and Education (CERE), an NGO that aims to connect the urban population with nature, with support from the Shapoorji Pallonji Trust.
“Shapoorji Pallonji places great emphasis on environmental sustainability and has taken numerous innovative strides in this direction,” says Zarine Commisariat, head of Corporate Social Responsibility at Shapoorji Pallonji. “The Native Biodiversity Garden is one more step towards our commitment to preserve the environment and educate the public, especially children, on the importance of biodiversity.”
“We have tried to make this a model for a number of institutions to emulate,” says Dr. Pardiwala. “Not just governmental agencies but even small bodies like local schools, homes and even corporate offices.
“The garden is an endeavour towards creating awareness on a larger scale,” says Kitayun Rustom, co-founder of CERE. “We want both teachers and students to come, enjoy and learn from the garden, to be a practical template in place of an alienating textbook experience.” So you have distinct sections, like the Sensory Section and the Butterfly Garden. The Vertical section houses more than 120 species of plants in a single structure, minimalist with a touch of the ecological. “Space is an important consideration for any kind of urban project,” says Ms Rustom. “Through this section, we want to show that you can grow such a wide variety of native species within such little space. This part is especially interesting for kids who could seek to learn about a wide variety of flora and fauna from a single structure.”
Then there is the artificial Sacred Grove, which seeks to connect cultural symbols with nature, and offers a lesson in history, telling of a time when certain parts of a forest were considered holy and not to be disturbed. And the Celebration section promotes the values of ecological secularism. “Similar plants serve different religious functions and this is what comprises our celebration section,” says Ms Rustom, as she shows off the carefully curated plants.
It’s more than plants too. There’s the Deepmaal, a traditional lamp, that’s an eight-foot handcrafted structure. And the dragon fly hand pump, made of scrap metal and waste materials. This is a garden of art and environment too.
CERE plans to add an information kiosk to facilitate the educational process; an ATM-like machine will be a repository of information such as the kinds of plants, their scientific names and the social histories and mythology that relate to them. Meanwhile, visitors can still find knowledge in every nook and corner. Like the lamp shades which have been designed to mimic seed pods of local varieties of plants: the Lotus cluster lights, the Red Silk Cotton street lights and the Catechu hanging lights. And the different leaf moulds embedded within the tiles of the water tank.
Dr. Pardiwala says nature is increasingly taking a homogeneous form, typified by modern manicured lawns, which isn’t good for the environment. And she talks of exotic plant varieties, say from a Singapore or a Korea which “you could easily get your hands on, but they are inherently resource-heavy as they are not meant for an environment such as this.”
Dr Pardiwala and her team made sure to source only native varieties for the park, for which “the amount of troubles that we had to undertake was indeed quite a handful!” She and Ms Rustom, both botany experts, also looked at how these local varieties could be incorporated within a curriculum: they aim to formulate comprehensive lesson plans to bridge the gap between practice and theory. For instance, visitors will witness a bee-hive coming to life, and get a lesson in pollination as well as an understanding one of the many ways the park uses organic solutions in order to maintain ecological balance.
The park is an experience designed to enthral children, but it will invigorate visitors of all ages.
The writer is an intern at The Hindu
The artificial Sacred Grove seeks to connect cultural symbols with nature and offers a lesson in history
The park is an experience designed to enthral children,
but it will invigorate visitors of all ages
