Flowers of yore to make a comeback

KOCHI: The Maharaja’s College has come up with an eco-friendly way to mark Onam this year. An Onam garden or ‘Onapoonthottam’ will be cultivated within the college premises. The garden is aimed at conserving indigenous varieties of Onam flowers which are now slowly losing space in our Onam carpets.“Many of these flowers are now dismissed as being wild flowers. They are not grown in our home gardens. During the Onam season we tend to buy flowers, mostly bigger and more attractive ones. So these indigenous flowers are slowly moving out of our flower carpets”, said Rohini Nair, head of the Nature Club at Maharaja’s College.The ‘Onapoonthottam’ is an initiative of the Nature Club and the Department of Botany. In the first stage, the flowers will be sourced from the students and from the college campus itself. “Many students have shown interest and agreed to contribute to the garden. In the coming days we are looking forward to planting a number of varieties,” said Sonu Sebastian, secretary of the nature club. Thumba, Thulasi, Mukkutti etc have already been planted. The nature club is looking at continuing with the maintenance of the garden even after the Onam season. “The college is looking at obtaining some rare varieties like ‘Kaaka Poo’ and ‘Kannanthali.’ Some of them are difficult to obtain now. We are trying to keep the garden as natural as possible. Lots of people say that the Maharaja’s campus looks unkempt and weedy. But this has actually helped us  obtain a lot of plants which would have disappeared had the campus been mechanically well-maintained”, says Rohini Nair.