Kandyan Forest Garden in Colombo

By Dr Gamini Kulatunga

This is our home garden on a five-perch plot built round the Kandyan Forest Garden concept. The canopy looks very thick from top but plants grow underneath.The idea to have a home garden germinated in me from my childhood spent on a tea plantation where we had a garden full of vegetables and fruits. Later when I joined the university, we had to establish a paddy field at Peradeniya. I followed it up with an organic farm at the Open University at its regional centre in Polgolla.

In Colombo, where we live now, we have a garden space of around five perches, including a grass lawn. A tube well is installed with an air-lift pump so that pipe-bone water is not used. After the recent increase in water tariff, a rain-water harvesting system, too, was installed.

The shallow tube well carries silt and sand which foul the mechanical pump that was used. To overcome the problem an air-lift pump was installed using a small air-compressor to pump air to the well. These pumps to do not produce high heads, therefore water is collected in to containers for watering the plants

The roof rainwater is collected into a recycled chemical container of 250-liter capacity. It gives adequate head to use a hose to water the plants.

To make use of the limited space available, a few space saving arrangements were put in place. Thampala is grown in troughs place of the wall and vertical gardening is practiced in different forms.

Chemical fertilizers are not used and composting is done using grass and fallen leaves subject to anaerobic fermentation. The fermented leaves give a cow-dung like slurry which could be used in a month after dilution it to one to 10.

Our grandchildren like to play with water and a spout is fitted to facilitate it. They help in the gardening, too, as there are plenty of fruits trees for them. The fruit trees are amberella, star-fruit, guava, mango, plantain, nun-nun, uguressa, orange and tangerine.

The vegetables grown are: ladies fingers, thibbatu, chillies, makaral, bitter gourd, leeks, Japan-batu, sweet pumpkin and manioc.

Leafy vegetables are: thampala (amaranth), thebu, hatawariya, gotukola, kankun, spinach, rampa, karapincha and sera.

Others: ginger, komarica, akkapana, bayleaf (dawulkurundu)

The additional benefit I get from the garden is plenty of firewood to light the Angi stove we use to boil water and do cooking in clay pots.