Tribune news service
Jalandhar, August 9th
A gynecologist by profession and mother of two children, Dr. Harneet Grover a busy woman. But she makes sure that she can spend an hour or two a day tending and multiplying a collection of 150 potted plants and replanting them on the balcony of her house on Link Road.
Her house has four huge garden areas on the ground floor, but she makes sure that her gardener does not enter her balcony garden, as she wants to look after it all by herself. With various barrels, glasses, drawers, boxes, jute sacks, sewer pipes, dried bamboo stalks, used quark containers, bottles, milk cups, etc., she multiplied her plants, which recorded enormous growth in the persistent rainy season.
Her plant collection includes vegetables including bitter gourd, chillies, etc., and some medicinal herbs such as tulsi, ajwain, arjun, etc., but most of them are ornamental. Jades are her all-time favorite as you can see them in multiples. Flowering plants such as allamanda, hibiscus, purslane, jalapa, peace lilies, bougainvilleas and begonias, and foliage plants such as a variety of creepers, succulents, kochia shrubs, snake plant, spider plant, ferns, monstera, pothos, caladias, ficus, etc were beautifully kept and covered the most of the floor of their balcony. She pruned and twisted different varieties of the foliage plants into different shapes and even tried to make bonsai out of them.
Dr. Harneet systematically arranged their pots. The plants grown in bamboo sticks hang down on ropes. The cups and bottles were stored in a plastic stand. Creepers also hang from the pots on the window shelves. In the central area there is a huge designer pot with five corners. Clay and ceramic pots in the shape of snails, cars, baskets and turtles decorate your rooms especially on a stand in the stairwell.
She said: “Not only I, but also my children Sehaj (10) and Sidak (7) help me with the smart ideas. They paint different pots and bottles for me. They even help me rearrange the pots decoratively. “
She also attributes the task to her husband and urologist Dr. Puneet Grover too. “He does photography and all the shopping for me. He brings all designer pots and types of plants from the nurseries. It really encourages me to continue my passion, ”she said.
With the help of a gardener, her mother-in-law Harvinderjit Kaur takes care of the garden areas of the house on the ground floor with a multitude of tall palm trees, mango and lemon trees as well as swings and garden furniture for the children.
