Bagh Basics

Adenium is not known as the desert rose for nothingthese hardy plants thrive in high temperatures and heat,just the kind Delhi is offering up this summer.

Written by Georgina Maddox
April 27, 2010 01:46 AM IST

3 min read

Adenium is not known as the desert rose for nothingthese hardy plants thrive in high temperatures and heat,just the kind Delhi is offering up this summer. However,not all your houseplants can withstand the heat with such ease. There was a time,in the late 1940s,when a kindly old Brit dropped off in letterboxes cyclostyled sheets of a bulletin called Garden Chat: these were gardening tips for the residents of Lutyens Delhi. His name was Sydney Percy Lancaster and he was the last British Superintendent of Horticultural Operations. The famed Sunder Nursery in Nizamuddin was laid down by Lancaster and continues to be the pride of the area.

A number of small nurseries mushroomed all over the shrinking Lutyens area in the 1960s and have taken over from where Lancaster left; one can rely on the native knowledge of the local gardener even if his diction and pronunciation may not match strides with the British sahib.

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At Kamal Nursery near Khan Market,we met O P Saini sitting behind the desk in his air-conditioned office amid packets of seeds and heavy garden tools. His team of three men in blue overalls sweats it out in the green house covered by a diaphanous green material. Direct sunlight is a killer in summer,which is why its ideal to have a net over your plants so they get filtered light, says Saini.

Abdul Khan of the Rajdhani Nursery in Jor Bagh agrees. Its ideal if your plants get only 25 per cent of the summer sun. Never make the mistake of bringing your indoor plants for sunning in the morning or noon; its only in the evening that they should get the sun, says Khan. And it pays to water your plants in the evening. A little down the road is Masjid Nursery where the kochia plants and white lilies bloom well. Go for Canna lilies,dahlias,tuberous begonias,Van Goghs irises and the Christmassy araucaria.

Caladiums that come in a rage of colours also fair well as potted plants though they need a lot of care and must be watered twice a day, says Himanshu Varma,who heads the Genda Phool Project that conducts weekend walks around some of the popular nurseries in the Capital. Get your hands dirty: turning over a few forkfuls of organic manure gives your plants the nourishment they need. A last word of advice,plan ahead for the monsoons when you may have to re-pot some of your favourite adeniums.