An oasis in the `concretescape`

The IT suburb of Koramangala boasts of parks and gardens, avenues and landscaped home gardens. But in Clement Silva's house in Koramangala 3rd Block, you will find a garden with a difference. Every space has been occupied with living plants, right from the entrance to the living room, hall, balcony and the terrace.  Be it flowering plants, aromatic plants, herbs, cacti, bonsai, orchids, ornamental plants - all of them greet any visitor. Thus it can be called an oasis in the concrete jungle.
When this correspondent visited his house last week, a 12-year-old bonsai of Adenium kept in the living room had bloomed with over three dozen flowers, making the view really splendid. The orchids at the entrance too were in full bloom and so were the various types of bougainvillea alongside the compound wall.
Even the frontage, the staircase and the corners of the house are filled with plants. A small room on the first floor is also full of plants in hanging pots. Interestingly, a pair of purple Sunbird has been roosting in the hanging garden for the past three years and breeding young ones.
What makes this senior citizen, Clement Silva, different from others is that he has been collecting the plants since childhood and doesn't buy them from the private nurseries. Wherever he visits, be it a friend's or a relative's place, he takes a sapling or a seed and nurtures it in his house. Apart from the usual mud pot, whatever resembles like a container has been turned into a pot to grow plants. Today he has hundreds of plant varieties. "Two years back I had been to Spain and from there I brought some seeds and last year and some more from Germany", he says.
Not only that, he waters and take care of each and every plant. This has been going on for the past three decades in his Koramangala house. Out of the dry leaves and foliage, he makes compost and uses it as manure. He has even adopted the rain water harvesting method in his own unique way. A little rain water is collected in a pipe fitted vertically alongside his house and the collected water is sufficient to water the potted plants on the ground. It is an example the others can follow. Not only that, a garden on the terrace cools, reduces carbon emission and makes optimum use of rain water. The garden has become part of his life.
 He can forget to eat but not forget to water his plants and spend some time in the garden every morning. "I got an interest in bonsai while I was studying at IIT Kharagpur," he says. An Agricultural Engineer by profession, Clement didn't work in that field. Instead, he set up a factory long ago, but always had a passion to collect plants.
His message: "Those interested in gardening should take it. But interest in it has to be cultivated as much as the plants."
–AKSHAYA DEVA