Eating healthy: Home garden guru teaches housewives to go green

Nilofer Sikandar hopes families and their servants will benefit from her advice.

LAHORE: A year ago, Nilofer Sikandar got invited to talk to women at a street in Sialkot’s posh Cantt area about home gardening. The houses and spacious lawns were well kept, but the street was full of litter.

Acting on her advice, the home owners engaged the families of two servants. One family collected garbage from the houses. The other family made large containers in which to prepare and store the compost. This organic fertiliser was then used to tend the gardens in the neighbourhood and the leftover compost sold.

Within months the street was free of litter, the homeowners had fresh vegetables and the servants had extra income as well as free samples from their gardens.

Nilofer’s lectures have also helped other women get into kitchen gardening at home, to the benefit of their families, servants and neighbourhoods. Now this energetic entrepreneur is hoping to take her campaign to the next level.

It started three years ago when Nilofer decided that kitchen gardening was a good activity for women sitting idle at home. She was encouraged to reach out to women by her colleagues in the Pakistan Industrial and Traders Associations Front, where she was on the entrepreneurs committee.

She arranged a meeting with housewives at Mayo Gardens in Lahore through an acquaintance. It did not prove a success. “It was a casual sessions about the benefits of growing one’s own vegetables. In response, most of the women dismissed the suggestion as they thought it was too much work for not a lot of end product,” she says.

The answer to this was simple, says Nilofer. “If not for oneself, we need to think of servants and gardeners working long hours for meagre wages. They can have a share of the produce they plant and care for, and the employer gets freshly grown vegetables.”

Eventually, a dozen or so of the 70 women at the Mayo garden meeting called her and asked for classes on how to prepare seedling from seeds and to protect the plant against diseases.

Nilofer later held lectures for women at Railway Colony, Model Town, Johar Town, Federal Government Colony and Defence. Many houses in these localities have big back lawns. “I persuade these women not to let God’s land go to waste,” she says. And she finds that once a woman gets into home gardening, they stay in touch with Nilofer as they seek constant guidance.

Now she is the chair of the PIAF Kitchen Garden committee and runs a website (greenfingersagri.com) about vegetable and fruit growing techniques, plant care and fertiliser. Her lectures explain how to make compost using kitchen garbage and how to engage servants in this activity.

Nilofer is most proud of her work in Sialkot and Federal Colony in Lahore. Another woman lectured by Nilofer grows vegetables on a kanal of land in Model Town. These vegetables are picked, cooked and fed to nearly 30 children admitted in a free school for poor children.

Jamila started growing vegetable at her 5-marla terrace garden after attending Nilofer’s lectures. “She taught me how to make the best use of the space and make compost,” she adds.

Women trained by Nilofer were recently sent, through funding from the UK covering travel and living costs, to Hisalpur and Swat with an aim to train housewives. They were encouraged to share their produce with their servants.

People from the AGHS Legal Aid Cell and the Aurat Foundation have also contacted Nilofer asking that she arrange classes for their employees.

Also co-chairperson of the PIAF entrepreneur committee, she says she is also interested in the numerous home industries branching off home gardening   packaging, home-cooked products, compost, dried fruits and vegetables, and pickles, syrups and sauces. But for now, Nilofer plans to set up a non-profit organisation and is in the process of acquiring manpower and funds. Getting help from the government is not an option, she says, as bureaucratic hurdles get in the way. She says she will try to cover costs by selling compost, containers and plants.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 30^th,  2011.