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Lalitha Sridhar

Inscape Garden in Chennai is a verdant nursery that sells not just plants. It has a broader vision — a vision to make people see green, quite literally. Lalitha Sridhar reports.

It's a movement in which I want every individual to participate. We can all spare a spoonful of water once in three days, can't we? That's all that is needed."

No, this isn't copy for a charitable endeavour. It is as much a business idea as it is a mission statement. M.V. Subramaniam of Inscape Garden isn't just selling plants, he is popularising a vision. What he hopes is that everybody will see — green.

On Chennai's Greenway's Road, right opposite the ministerial bungalows and sharing a boundary wall with the Krishnamurthy Foundation, lies a road now frequently taken. It is lined with thick shrubs and pretty ornamentals, a sprinkling of flowers and a canopy of leaves. Braced for another of this city's sweltering summers, we can pause here and breathe a deep green sigh. The tiled pathway leads right through the verdant nursery and brings us to a tidy office where we are required to leave our footwear at the doorstep. There is more colour to be found and this time it doesn't come from the flowers one comes to expect in such an establishment.

Shades of red, brown, blue, green, orange, yellow and even an amber, fill fluted glass containers with what looks and feels exactly like the jelly served with cold desserts. This is a polyethylene polymer, which sustains plant life with the aforementioned spoonful of water, once in three days. The polymer is non-toxic and flatteringly attractive. "You can have plants anywhere about your house — in the kitchen, on window sills, why, even on the flush tank. Plants are the best oxygen generators possible. I hope to convince people that they must keep at least one plant in the house. Bouquets cost a great deal — they wither and are thrown away. With plants you can watch your love grow. You can begin saving the planet in your own home!" says Subramanian.

Behind this successful venture is the man from Bangalore with several projects to his credit. Commissioned to landscape the GRT Grand Days Hotel in Chennai, Subramaniam sensed a potential market and, "chose to concentrate in this part for some time".

His greatest challenge has come from the "Chennai psyche, which seems to believe that plants are impossible to maintain." Inscape Garden set up home here about a year-and-a-half ago — exactly around the time the city was reeling from crippling water shortages after three years of failed rains. "I was able to disprove the notion that plants are difficult to keep. All it takes is a little bit of care. I am beginning a programme for school children where I am going to invite them here, free of cost, and teach them more. The idea just needs to be understood, earlier the better. Conservancy is a vision. We don't have a shortage of water — we just waste it. Even treated effluent water can sustain splendid gardens," says Subramaniam, who ensures every individual who buys a plant from him is told exactly how he can keep it going green.

Inscape Garden recently hosted a flower show, which boasted of picture-perfect poinsettias favoured by the White House amongst other exotic beauties such as the Gusmania Orange Dale, the Neo Regalia Pink and the Euphorbia Bunch. These were besides the "usual' hibiscus, chrysanthemums, marigolds, balsams, ageratums et al. A Cactus Week, followed by one exclusively for the hibiscus were organised during May.

Scheduled for August is a "Special Effects" display that will showcase plants, which Chennai has never seen before and concluding the year will be a range of Christmas trees for Yuletide. Subramaniam cites a Bangalore-based study by Dr Ram Mirlay, which covered 2,000 software professionals and found 78 per cent of them to be suffering from the dry-eye syndrome brought about from gazing too long at computer monitors. We are informed that a plant on your desk can keep the ophthalmologist away.

Possibly the cutest collectible at Inscape Garden is the Cup-O-Plant, a sturdy variety of fresh flora housed in a plastic container, shaped like a terracotta pot, lined with chips of white marble. It comes with a discreet holder for un-messy draining of extra water.

The Cup-O-Plant is already retailed across select gift shops and will soon be on the counters of department stores. That will enable you to "pick an oxygen generator along with your shopping".

Inscape Garden's growing clientele has responded with "tremendous enthusiasm" — one lady chose Cup-O-Plants for her child's birthday party return present and another distributed them as thamboolam gifts for Navarathri. I paid 30 bucks for my velvet-leafed acquisition. It sits on my table even as I write — and yes, it does make for some very cheerful company.

Pictures by Bijoy Ghosh

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