A natural education

The course was started by Paul Blanchflower, the founder of the Botanical Gardens, to train people to run ecological projects. “We are trying to create an educated society in Auroville and India about the advantages of native plants,” says Paul. “If you are going to save the planet, there is a limit to what we can do in the Botanical Garden. But if we can scale up and create armies of trained people, that will help.”

The course is spreading Auroville’s reforestation culture to the wider world, with the first batch of students having completed the inaugural six-month course in March. 

The full-time course offers a thorough training in working with nature, mixing theory with plenty of hands-on practice, focussing on three main components; horticulture forestry, eco-restoration conservation, and landscape project management. The students learn about aspects of plant biology and ecology through site visits to diverse eco-projects in Auroville and the bioregion. Paul explains that the training is for “people who are theoretical to gain practical skills; and for practical people to gain theoretical knowledge”. 

The trainers include some of Auroville’s experts in their fields: Deoyani Sarkhot, Dr Lucas, Island Lescure and Nina Sengupta – all of whom have experience of working on the land. Island, an arborist, suggests that the training brings a spirit of professionalism to Auroville that was lacking and long overdue. He hopes that aspiring foresters will learn how to steward a forest, to know what’s useful to cultivate, and to plant things in the correct order. He appreciates the possibility for Aurovilians to join a course and pick up skills in new areas, and he himself partially undertook Deoyani’s soil course for that reason. 

Nina Sengupta, who has a PhD in Wildlife Science, teaches with a focus on how biodiversity can integrate with agriculture, tourism, other industries – including mining – and was inspired to “give young people a skill set in land stewardship with ecological focus”. She encourages students to classify wild herbs accurately. An example she light-heartedly refers, is what only in Auroville is called ‘chicken spinach’, but elsewhere is known as waterleaf, Talinum fruticosum. Drawing attention to the fact the Auroville faculty works on the land, unlike faculty elsewhere, she also emphasises the benefits of the Auroville ‘campus’ setting: “Auroville is a unique place to study, as you step out of the classroom and can see the things we were just studying, as distinct from the urban settings of most biology classrooms.” 

Twelve students participated in the first course: a mixture of Aurovilians, existing Botanic Garden volunteers, German Weltwaerts exchange students, local villagers, and two employees of cement company Ramco, who sponsored the local village participants. The graduates all emphasise the joy of gaining knowledge that can be applied. “Before, I could not write ‘Hibiscus rosa-sinensis’, and now I can,” says Shivaganesh, an Edaiyanchavady-raised youth who left school after the 12th year. He recounts how his friends now tease him on their group jogs, as he always stops to look at trees. Monica enthuses that “not only was the course fun, unlike in school, it also made more sense. I felt I was learning something I am actually going to use. The first time I saw a plant and recognised it from a photo, there was something really magical about it. It is connecting with nature at a different level.” They all agreed that they had become more conscious about nature through the course. Monica recalls how what had previously seemed “like an indistinct mass of green”, slowly “revealed itself to be a new world”. This became most apparent when she began sawing down a tree. “Then I stopped as I noticed a bee hive of tiny black bees, mosquito bees in Tamil, Tetragonula Iridipennis,” she says. “It looks like dead wood, but that’s the home of one of the most important elements of the ecosystem.” 

Shivaganesh observes that the “good bonding with nature” enables them to now think “of the whole circle; whereas before, we would think about cutting a tree but not about the birds who live there”. Ritu appreciated learning that “there are so many ripples as to how you can nourish the earth, or what you can contribute. If you do not mulch, then the water evaporates and then the groundwater depletes. The course gives a big picture and joins the dots of ecological conservation – water, soil, species identification, plant care, and nursery management.”

The first batch of students are putting into practice the ecological and greening skills they’ve learnt in the course. Shivaganesh has shifted from construction work in the Botanical Gardens, and now works and lives in the nursery there; Monica plans to give up her current computer-based job to work in the environmental field; and Ritu, with a Masters in Apparel Design, plans to develop her skills in making colours from plants. Ritu will also employ her new knowledge as an organizer for the second training course, which will start in December with a new batch of a dozen students. Paul hopes the course will be self-supporting in a couple of years. “In global terms, there’s a crying need for trained people to do ecological projects, and we can try to meet that need,” he asserts. 

What the Auroville pioneers discovered through years of sweat, sun, trial and error, can now be learnt in a comprehensive manner in this inspiring Botanical Gardens course. 

For more information visit http://auroville-botanical-gardens.org/auroville-ecological-horticulture-course/