City’s green thumbs? Exploring footprint of plant nurseries around Bengaluru

City residents nurture indoor and outdoor gardens around their homes and offices. Some passionately display a variety of plants potted or planted: Popular flowering plants, leafy ones in many shapes and shades of green, climbers, creepers, plants that grow in water, succulents, bonsais and orchids, alongside green lawns. Now, lawns and gardens are not just grown on land but are also grown on balconies, terraces and vertical walls, apart from the various types of planters or pots.

Urban landscaping reflects the urban notion of ‘connecting with nature’. City residents get their plants and gardening materials from plant nurseries in and around the city. A stroll in Bengaluru will expose you to numerous curbside stalls selling attractive ornamental plants, colorful pots, succulents (both expensive and cheap ones) and medicinal herbs suitable for indoor and outdoor spaces. Plant nurseries have taken their own share of urban sprawl, increasing every year like other entities that form the expanding city. Urbanites’ newfound craving for lush greenspaces turned these nurseries into profitable business ventures. Meanwhile, it’s really important to take a closer look to see if these nurseries are actually greening the city.

Photo: Anjali V Raj

Nurseries can be retail or wholesale. Retail nurseries are small and mostly temporary sheds found in the city center close to residential complexes or roadsides. Their clients are mostly individual buyers from the apartments and small pushcarts selling potted flowering plants door to door during the day. Retail nurseries source their plants from large wholesale nurseries around the city. They mostly sell ornamental plants and herbs (priced anywhere from Rs 20 to a few hundreds), including succulents and bonsais (priced between a few hundreds and thousands). Typically, the owners of these nurseries are long-term residents with a migrant labour force of two to three workers.

The land at the curbside is either rented on monthly payment or leased on year-to-year basis. Sand / soil required for the potting mixture is acquired from construction sites or sand lorries that come to the city, clay soil and manure from farmers and water for irrigation from tankers. Plants are irrigated every day. Soil amendments like manures and fertilisers are regularly applied.

Wholesale nurseries are large and capital-intensive, often spanning 20-50 acres located in peri-urban areas (Kengeri, Varthur, Anekal, Devanahalli). There are nurseries run by state agencies including Lalbagh Botanical Garden Nursery, Gandhi Krishi Vigyana Kendra Nursery, among others, that are quite distinct from the private wholesale nurseries.

Photo: Vidya Puttur Sadashiva

The plants in wholesale nurseries are maintained in shade nets and polyhouses where irrigation water is extracted from borewells. Wholesale nurseries employ about 50 daily wage workers. These nurseries sell more varieties of plants and in bulk. They also sell expensive bonsais and exotic plants costing lakhs of rupees. Malls, corporate offices, other large buildings, retail shops and luxury leisure spaces fall in their clientele.

The vast land area currently occupied by wholesale nurseries in peri-urban Bangalore used to be agricultural lands. They were growing cereals like finger millet and pulses till they were acquired by the nursery owners. It is interesting to note that farmers didn’t pursue this profitable path themselves, though nursery raising is reliant on the same resources as crop cultivation itself – soil, water, soil amendments and plant protection chemicals. Garden nurseries, though are a land-based enterprises, appear to need more resources and different set of skills than agriculture.

Photo: Anjali V Raj

Urban nurseries add value by selling attractive pottery with pebbles and other decorations. A plant costing just Rs 80 can be sold for a few hundreds to thousands with designer pots and pebbles that appeal to the eyes of urban consumers looking for an appealing ‘green’ decor. The nurseries also sell seeds, potting mixture, manure, colorful planters, pebbles and gardening / maintenance tools to complete the package. Hence, nurseries selling ornamental plants and herbs are potential profitable business opportunities in the city, that do not come under heavy taxation brackets.

Nurseries, thus, could be the necessary green thumbs of any city. The agro-ecological impacts of these urban nurseries hide behind its deceptively appealing green façade. First, large fertile land parcels get transformed into nurseries, taking away land from food production, while the erstwhile land-owning food-producing farmers join the floating labour force for the city. Nurseries demand huge quantity of water; typically, a small nursery needs 1,000-2,000 litres per day, wholesale nurseries guzzling in much more. This puts pressure on the city’s existing water demand and groundwater levels.

Photo: Anjali V Raj

High-value exotic plants demanded by the city require high maintenance in terms of manure, various synthetic inputs and infrastructure. The runoffs from the nurseries add to non-point sources of water pollution, possibly polluting the surface and groundwater sources in the vicinity. Solid waste generation (both bio-mass and synthetic) in these nurseries is also an issue that needs to be addressed. The city waste management and sanitation systems do not extend to the peripheries. The plastic waste generated at the nurseries is unfit for recycling or resource recovery and pile up until finally burnt on-site or dumped elsewhere.

Nurseries impart aesthetic appeal to a city. But to feed the city’s crush for green spaces, nurseries end up extracting fertile soil and water and then pollute them. Often, invasive species and exotics are popularised in the rush to landscape newly built complexes. Thus, there could be an inadvertent negative impact on biodiversity too. But city residents, horticulturists and concerned officials together can make them sustainable enterprises that can support a substantial work force.

Photo: Anjali V Raj

Garden owners, nursery owners and staff members need to acquire environmental basics and know-how. The agro-ecological implications of greening the urban spaces necessitate a rethinking before continuously sourcing plants from the nurseries. Many plant buyers appear to be regularly replacing plants that do not survive or establish well in their gardens. Neighborhood sharing of planting materials, choosing plants suitable for local weather conditions and careful and appropriate maintenance of plants can reduce the unintended ecological footprint of urban plant lovers. Well-informed nurseries and residents surely can make the green urban dreams true to its colour.

This short study was part of the research project funded by the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Government of India, under the Indo-German Collaborative Research Center. The content and opinions expressed are that of the authors and are not necessarily endorsed by / do not necessarily reflect the views of Azim Premji University. Views expressed are the authors’ own and don’t necessarily reflect those of Down To Earth.