FDCM turns wasteland into garden, nursery from scrap

NAGPUR: Earlier a dumping ground for nearby bar owners and wasteland for others, a small patch of forest land on Hingna road has now been converted into garden and nursery of medicinal and aromatic plants by the Forest Development Corporation of Maharashtra (FDCM).
The entire garden has been developed from scrap and waste material like vehicle tyres, cooler tanks, almirah drawers, water tanks and cement pipe pieces used as planters.Debris of tiles dumped after construction of FDCM building has been used to carve the pathway, giving it a beautiful mosaic look.
The Rs17 lakh project was commissioned by PCCF (HoFF) N Rambabu on August 7. The project, a brainchild of Imtienla Ao, chief general manager (CGM), medicinal plants, said, “More than 70 species of medicinal and aromatic plants and air purifying plants have been planted in the garden and nursery.”
“The garden has been given an aesthetic look by beautifully painting the scrap. Chairs made out of tyres comfort the visitors while all the dumped glass beer bottles have been used to set up raise beds for periwinkle plants,” said range forest officer (RFO) Trupti Thakur.
“The saplings have been labelled mentioning their importance and scientific names, thus also serving the purpose of education through the garden and nursery,” said another RFO Kalpana Chinchkhede.
According to Chinchkhede, the air purifying plants can be easily grown in homes and have been selected on the basis of Nasa Clean Air Study. “These species are effective in cleaning specific air pollutants and have been chosen to grow in Nagpur climate. The said species are also available for sale in the nursery,” she said and added that as these saplings can be planted indoor and act against pollutants like xylene, benzene, toluene, ammonia etc, on day one itself several saplings were sold.
“Most of the saplings that were sold included lemon grass and snake plant, which is very effective to contain indoor pollution and is also easy to maintain. We will make these saplings available for common public,” said Thakur.
Chinchkhede was instrumental in conceptualizing ‘best from waste’ theme along with CGM Ao and landscape expert Tianaro Pongen. She also created Warli painting on the dilapidated wall and the spot has become a selfie point.
CGM Srinivas Rao and GM Rishikesh Ranjan and other officers and staff were also present at the event.