Bhubaneswar: Expanding concrete cities and shrinking greenery disrupt the urban microclimate, increase temperature, air pollution, and create heat islands. The loss of vegetation in cities has made urban areas hotter and uncomfortable, especially in summers.

Restoring green spaces through creating rooftop and home gardens can help to regulate temperature, improve air quality, and to restore ecological balance in urban neighbourhood.

Rooftop gardening and urban horticulture help mitigate effects of climate change by reducing heat, improving air quality, and promoting biodiversity.

These gardens also enhance food security, reduce energy costs and food miles, create green spaces with fruits, vegetables, flowering, and foliage plants, and make cities more liveable while mitigating urban heat island effects and reducing carbon footprints.

To create awareness about the benefits of increasing urban greening, Central Horticultural Experiment Station(CHES), Bhubaneswar, a regional Station of ICAR-Indian Institute of Horticultural Research, Bengaluru, successfully organised two day Seminar on Rooftop Gardening and Urban Horticulture recently in association with Plant Lovers Association and Kitchen Gardeners' Association, Bhubaneswar, under the aegis of the Innovative Project for promotion of Rooftop Gardening and Urban Horticulture in selected cities of Odisha (SP-RTG), funded by Department of Agriculture & Farmers' Empowerment, Government of Odisha.

The Seminar was inaugurated by Dr. P.C. Lenka, retired Head of the Department of Fruit Science, OUAT, Bhubaneswar, Khirod Pattanaik, President Plant Lovers’ Association, Maheshwar Khillar, Managing Trustee, Kitchen Gardeners’ Association, and other dignitaries on the dais in the inaugural session.

The two days seminar focused on the science, innovations and practices addressing the emerging opportunities for urban home gardeners and finding workable solutions for problems in gardening. Dr. D. Kalaivanan, Senior Scientist serving in ICAR-IIHR, Bengaluru explained in detail about many innovative technologies like Arka Shasya Poshak Ras, Arka Vertical Vegetable Garden structure, Arka vegetable seed kits, Arka Decomposer, Arka Microbial Consortium, and many other technologies available for rooftop and home gardening. A field level demonstration on preparation of Arka Fermented Cocopeat was organized for the benefit of the participants. 

Exclusive technical session was organized for deliberating on strengthening the network of garden vendors and service providers in the cities for easy availability of high-quality, cost-effective garden inputs, seeds, and planting materials, for accelerating the spread of home and institutional gardens in cities of Odisha. Dilip Panda from Urban Nursery and Radharani Pradhan from Ama Garden explained in detail about the importance of different types of gardens in cities and how the nurseries can play an important role in the crusade for developing urban gardens.

S. Radha, a successful entrepreneur from Bengaluru, highlighted the importance of growing microgreens in space scarce cities and demonstrated the method of growing microgreens in easy-to-use kits. Neelima Mishra, founder, Ceiba Green Solutions, delivered a lecture on importance of scientific disposal of home waste and held a demonstration on source segregation of organic home waste and the methods of preparing compost at home. Two students of College of Engineering Bhubaneswar--Ankita Bose and Vaishnavi Bawane--highlighted the future of vertical farming in space crunched cities in near future.

Another session was dedicated for discussing the role and responsibility of social, print, and electronic media; amateurs and professional bloggers, vloggers, columnists and content writers among others. For promotion of the concept and philosophy of green cities, successful rooftop gardener and YouTuber Kalpana Dalei and Social Media Influencer Aradhana Biswal explained various vistas of using social media for creation awareness and promotion of the virtues of rooftop gardening and urban horticulture among the masses.

On the sidelines of the seminar, an exhibition, comprising ten stalls, was organized to showcase and sell the products of the nurseries, startups, entrepreneurs, and others. CHES(ICAR-IIHR) demonstrated different products of the institution, and sold quality seeds and planting materials.

Many successful urban home gardeners from different cities participated in the seminar and shared their success stories, tips, and gardening recipes. The members of Bhubaneswar based Plant Lovers’ Association, Kitchen Gardeners’ Association, Rotary Club of Bhubaneswar Heritage, Cuttack based Nature Lovers' Association, Eco Clubs, Hindustan Helping Hands, PAL Charity foundation, and many other organisations participated in the seminar.

More than 250 garden lovers from different cities of Odisha participated in the seminar and associated Exhibition, with more than 25 speakers. Coordinator of the Seminar Dr. P. Srinivas, Principal Scientist and Principal Investigator of the Innovative Project for promotion of Rooftop Gardening and Urban Horticulture in selected cities of Odisha (SP-RTG), informed that many such seminars, workshops, ward level campaign meetings are being contemplated for promotion of rooftop gardening and urban horticulture in different cities of Odisha.