The Botanical Gardens educational programmes

The one-day nature programme

The Botanical Garden spends about 8-10 lakhs a year on its educational programmes, for which they receive a contribution from the Sri Aurobindo International Institute of Educational Research of approximately Rs. 3 lakhs. The educational experience is free of cost for the students and includes food. Transport is organized by the school.

A typical one-day starts at 10 am, when a class of around 30-40 students and their teachers arrive by bus from their home village. They begin the morning session with an introduction to the international township of Auroville. All programmes are conducted in Tamil to ensure every word is understood.

“Every day new students are coming to take part, they come from up to 40 kilometres away, and the majority of them have no idea about the concept of Auroville or that it even exists,” says Kamatchi. “We tell them about Auroville, what it means, who is living here. The children ask lots of questions: about the Matrimandir, about meditation, and why so many foreigners live here. We describe the different areas of Auroville, the City area, the Greenbelt area and the reforestation projects that we are involved in. We talk about trees, particularly about the species of the Tropical Dry Evergreen Forest which was native to this area and which India was starting to lose.”

Next, a video about the Garden is screened. It’s a funny movie created by Wazo with Satyamurthy as its main actor. He proudly tells, “We had a lot of fun making this movie, the children love it.”

After the introduction talk, the students walk through the Medicinal Herb and Plant Garden, created and nurtured by Kamatchi. The beneficial plants are shown and an explanation is given how they can be utilised.

Then Kamatchi talks about the alternate energy that the Garden utilises. The students visit the solar power systems and climb to the top of the windmill to view the Garden from above. They question how the red brick elevated water tank functions, and learn about energy efficient architecture.

Lunch is served at the Garden. “At first, we would order the food from a local eatery,” says Kamatchi. “But as each portion would come packaged in plastic, we realised we had to change. All food is now prepared by our own kitchen team. Students are asked not to bring outside food so that the programme can follow a zero waste policy.”

To show the students how not to create excess waste and spoil the environment, they are invited to take their plates and cups back to the kitchen, so that they can see for themselves how much and what type of waste is produced.

Conserving water is another topic. The students learn about the daily dishwashing routine and how it is possible for 50 students to wash all the vessels using only two 30-litre buckets of water.

After lunch, the bus takes the students to the Auroville Visitor’s Centre. The students watch the Matrimandir informational video, walk to the Viewing Point and then, after a fun filled amazing and exhausting day, return home.

The three day nature camps

Three times a year, about 70 students take part in a three-day Nature Camp. Students are taken on a nature study trip through Auroville’s Forecomers Canyon and the Pitchandikulam Forest. They do all their cooking and cleaning themselves and collect firewood together.

Back home, the study work is shown to their schools and families. This creates awareness within the villages of what the education programmes teach. Satyamurthy mentions that in Indian culture, girls are generally not allowed by their parents to attend overnight school trips. It is deemed unsafe.

The five day summer camps

The five-day summer camps are an extended version of the one-day nature programme. Three days are spent at the Garden and two days on a 300 kilometres road trip to collect seeds of the Tropical Dry Evergreen Forest species for the seed bank and the nursery of the Botanical Garden. The night-time activities include a Yatra awareness movie and songs around the campfire.

The cycle rallies

Two or three times a year, the Garden organizes a one-day cycle rally around Auroville to discover the diverse nature of the flora and fauna and see wild animals such as snakes, hares and lizards. Bird watching is part of the early morning activities. Even the school teachers are excited to now learn about the many different types of birds they have seen and heard since childhood.

Once every year there is a seven-day cycle rally. The students cycle up to Kodaikanal or the Kalvaraian Hills, and on the way plant trees in local schools. Upon arrival, they do a guided track in the hills.

Every student is given a drawstring cotton bag with a steel plate and cup to use in the local restaurants if their food is not served on a banana leaf, rejecting take away containers, plastic bottles and bags, thus keeping to the zero waste policy.

They stay overnight in government public buildings such as schools or in the village temple. The students learn to leave the area cleaner than they found it. The local temple priests are very grateful for this initiative. Satyamurthy describes the daily ritual: “Every morning we make an eco-sand toilet. We dig a big hole which gets filled in, and everyone takes their turn.”

The five-days Kodaikanal Nature Camp:

Since the last five years, college students have been invited for a two-day camp at the Auroville Botanical Garden followed by a three-day forest camp in Kodaikanal. They visit the Anglade Institute of Natural History, where late Father K.M. Matthew resided, an Indian Jesuit priest and botanist and the renowned author of “The Flora of Tamil Nadu”. In the forests of Kodaikanal, the students spend their days comparing the species of the local forest, known as Chola, with those of the Tropical Dry Evergreen Forest they have seen around Auroville.