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Southern west Bengal, in the district of Paschim Medinipur.
How to produce diverse food around the year for home consumption without harmful chemicals is largely missing in our village.
Work with the villagers so that they can plan, design, and manage their gardens with minimal external input and effort to produce food around the year.
To inspire other community members to create such gardens in their own homes.
Each garden has growing space between 150 sqft to 300 sqft.
As the name suggests the garden is located right next to your home. In our context, a home garden will produce varieties of vegetables, herbs, spices, flowers, and fruits with minimal or no external input. Out of many existing names like kitchen garden, nutrition garden, etc. we preferred “home garden” for two reasons:
a) We want to emphasize on the home consumption of the produce.
b) We believe in this common phrase “home is where the heart is”. We all want to live in beautiful homes. So, we want to create gardens that not only produce the food, but which will look aesthetically appealing too. This beautiful landscape will help the inhabitants of the home to connect with their land and give them a sense of pride to create such spaces.
It is often argued population boom is contributing to food insecurity heavily as the land is getting scarce for per capita food production. However, we will argue otherwise, i.e., it is not how many we are but what we do with our land that matters! From history and even from contemporary times we find many examples where we see humans have successfully tended their land working nature. Through that, they have produced an abundance of food in and around their surroundings. Small spaces can be extremely productive with effective planning and efficient management. Home gardens will add buffers to the demand for food and meet the nutritional need of the families. More importantly, these spaces will provide microclimates to help the local ecosystem thrive.