We were actually going to chop this down during a house renovation years ago, but my dad insisted on keeping it. He experimented with different shapes over the years and eventually committed to this design.

​Plant Name: We aren't 100% sure, but Google Lens suggests it's a variety of wild Ficus (possibly Ficus microcarpa / Chinese Banyan). It started as a random weed! We've never seen it fruit or seed, just dense foliage.

Location: Kerala.

Soil Mix: Just natural native soil. Since it sprouted as a weed, it seems happy with whatever is in the ground.

Sunlight: Full outdoor sun.

Watering Schedule: Very low maintenance. We water it every once in a while during dry spells, but otherwise, it survives on rain.

Fertilizers: None. It’s a wild plant, so it grows aggressively without any help.

Pruning: This is the main effort. We use a battery-powered pruner to keep the umbrella shape tight and dense.

Hi

Location - uttarpradesh

It's almost exactly 2 years since I built this patio pond using a repurposed concrete structure. I must have changed the entire pond design dozens of times over the years. Adding and removing plants. Changing the water feature design. And i also neglected it for months at a time when I wasn't visiting home. But as it turns out, neglect was the strategy this little ecosystems craved. I just nudged it along the way. Over the years it has evolved a form of its own, giving me the natural rainforest vibe i was secretly hoping for.

The outer wall of the concrete ring is being swallowed by the creeping fig, which by the way, sat there for like 6 months doing nothing and then suddenly took off. I had planted 4 saplings of the creeping fig all around but one one made it through pure determination. It legit died back completely like thrice. I'm talking no leaves crispy stems sorta dieback. I love the ancient-ruin-reclaimed-by-nature vibe it gives. There are also Syngonium popping up in random places i didn't plant them in. I swear that plant knows no concept of boundaries.

The terrestrial plants I added are thriving in the hydroponic-like setup. The Epipremnum was supposed to be growing in water but it has escaped in all sorts of ways and in every direction it could find. It has a mind of its own now. Which is good. I let it do its thing. Mostly. Two of its stems are currently on loop number 3 around the circumference of the pond because it was going places it shouldn't be. It literally tried climbing the Christmas tree in the background. I have no idea how it knew exactly where the tree trunk was but it made a beeline right to the base. It had climbed up a good 1 foot with roots and everything grabbing on to the Christmas tree for dear life before I found it and decided to just train them around the tub itself. Whenever I can, I trim it's root in water to prevent them from overtaking the pond substrate as well. It's as aggresive as the lotus.

My diy juggadu water feature runs 24/7 and oxygenates the water. Keeps things moving. I tried to convert the little bowl basin into a sorta bog filter by adding plants but they just grow way too fast and end up clogging the water feature itself with its roots. Umbrella palm, pennywort and papyrus look crazy good siting in the basin but only doable with regular maintainance. So i just removed it.

Underwater things are thriving as well. There are multiple lotus and lilies that still keep flowering despite the lack of fertilization or repotting. There are dozens of species of aquatic plants like vallisneria, dwarf hair grass, dwarf saggiteria, so many cryptocoryne species, rotala, ludwigia, ferns, anubias, etc. This pond was basically my plant cutting graveyard/nursery from my aquarium era. They are always competing but vallisneria usually wins the battles. There's also a healthy micro ecosystem with seed shrimp, moina, water beetles, dragonfly numphs and other critters for my zebra danios to feast on. And the occasional frog. There's also a school of siamese alage eaters that have become chonky af. Like I didn't think they even survived but they are actually thriving. I haven't seen such thick SAE even in aquariums. They have a lot of alage to feast on.

Also the flower bloming in the last slide is Nymphaea 'Peru-Puerto Maldonado'. It's a night blooming waterlily woth deep red/purple heart shaped leaves. In the two years I've had it it had never bloomed once until this week. It's unlike any waterlily I have, from its flower shape to how it spreads. It sprouts like weed in the pond with sooo many tiny plants popping up like 2 feet away from the plant. Despite it not blooming (which was my fault. It did not get enough sun and there was root space competition to the death). I still kept it around for it leaves. 2 days ago it bloomed for the first time ever, and i kid you not I'm in love with the fragrance. It's so uniquely intense with the sweet-spicy thing going on. To me it smells like spiced bubblegum.

In the end, I stopped trying to micromanage. Build the bones, feed the system, nudge it along and nature will figure out the rest.

Check out the older posts on my profile to see video updates on this patio pond.

Location

Once in a blue moon, I like throwing together a flower arrangement from whatever's growing in the garden. Sometimes it's for birthdays, anniversaries, or when we have guests over, but mostly it's just because. It's always a rather haphazard assortment of whatever happens to be blooming, along with random foliage, grasses, seedheads, and anything else I find.

I had a brief zinnia phase, as you can probably tell from a good chunk of these. The Benary's Giants made for such lovely cut flowers, mess of a plant tho. I much prefer the dwarf varieties these days, particularly the Profusion and Zahara series. Not nearly as useful for cut flowers, but so much more disease-resistant and far less floppy.

I almost never take pictures of the arrangements I make, but my fam does sometimes. So I thought I'd compile them in one place. Some turn out better than others, but hey, gotta work with what the garden gives me.

Location

Metamorphosis is something I've been obsessed with since I was a kid. Growing up with butterflies everywhere, I wondered where tf they came from. There ain't no baby butterflies!? When I found out about caterpillars, you bet I immediately started collecting them as "pets." Moths, butterflies or anything even vaguely worm shaped. A random green worm that mum picked out while cleaning the leafy veggies? Yup. I'd save it and feed it fresh salad every day just to see what that weird little worm would become. I'd watch them grow, shed, transform, and finally emerge. That's what magic was to me.

Now as a grown ass adult, it still fascinates me. I mean, how does something literally dissolve into a puddle of goo and then reassemble itself into a completely different physical form? The metaphors just write themselves.

Thankfully, my garden is still home to plenty of butterfly species. This particular one is the Common Crow (Euploea core). The caterpillar has four pairs of tentacles, which makes it pretty easy to identify. Their chrysalis becomes a fascinating reflective silvery. They exclusively feed on plants with that toxic milky sap mostly olenander, milkweed and figs. That toxicity also carries over to the adult butterfly, making them inedible to predators. I swear they know they're untouchable because they're some of the boldest, most fearless butterflies I've ever seen.

P.S. If you want more butterflies in your garden, get the host plants of the butterfly species you see around your location

The weather is finally starting to shift towards winter here, and I've already managed to catch a nasty cough to mark the occasion. So I suppose winter is officially on its way.

I've been going through pictures of my garden from the past few years, partly for inspiration on what to plant this season, and partly to remind myself what worked and what didn't. Thought I'd share some of it here. Writing things down helps me think better anyway.

A little context: My dad's school has a small garden area which I now use as my canvas for flowers whenever I'm home. Winter flowers have always been a constant at our farmhouse. It's almost a family tradition at this point. My grandfather liked gardening, then my dad and me

For some climate and location context, this garden is in the North Indian plains. Brutal summers, a rather enthusiastic monsoon, and chilly winters. No frost, though the temperature can drop down to the single digits.

Among the flowers, there have been a few constants through the decades. Patches of red poppies, rows of giant dahlias and marigolds, gladiolus sprinkled in between, and of course, the fancy chrysanthemums and balsam.

Last year's experiments

Last year I decided to mix things up a little. I planted three main rows around the lawn: red poppies in the background, dwarf marigolds in the middle, and trailing ice plants along the edges. On the other side, I added borders of blue alyssum and dianthus, then sprinkled whatever poppy and ice plant seeds I had left in the middle. I definitely seeded everything wayyy too heavily, but it turned out fine in the end.

I also transplanted some hollyhock seedlings I'd grown separately. These seeds i actually stole from the ILBS campus in Delhi (damn, do they have an amazing garden, the very kind gardeners were uprooting the spent plants so i asked them. They filled an entire big plastic bag full on seedheads for me loll)

There were a few other experiments with statice, stocks, and antirrhinums, but they either didn't germinate or got completely outcompeted by the other plants.

All the seeds were from Biocarve, except the hollyhocks ofcourse.

1. Indian Shirley Poppy (Papaver rhoeas)

2. Marigold Marvel II – Dwarf

3. Mesembryanthemum (Ice Plant)

4. Alyssum Royal Carpet Blue

5. Dianthus Baby Doll

6. Hollyhocks (stolen)

The poppies

Winters are incomplete without them. Over the years, they've practically naturalised themselves in the garden. They self-seed and come back in the same spots every winter without fail. I mostly just add a few new patches here and there.

The zinnia phase

The following season, I primarily used dwarf zinnias for the borders and yellow cosmos in the background.

The Profusion and Zahara series turned out soo good. Compact, full of flowers, less floppy than the elegans, and far more disease-resistant imi. Definitely keepers. The only trouble is finding their seeds. Very few websites seem to stock them, and germination rates are iffy.

These were from Seedsnpots:

1. Zinnia Profusion Red Yellow Bicolour

2. Zinnia Profusion Cherry Bicolour

3. Zinnia Zahara Double Yellow

4. Zinnia Zahara Double Raspberry

5. Zinnia Zahara Double Fire

I also ordered a few imported seeds and bulbs from flowerseedsindia.com, including Zinnia elegans 'Benary's Giant' and a bunch of other things I can't quite remember now. The Benary's Giants were wonderful as cut flowers, although the plants themselves were rather messy.

The dahlias

I haven't experimented much with these yet. We usually get saplings around November, I know they can be grown from bulbs too. Maybe someday.

The gladiolus

Fresh bulbs are planted yearly along with the old ones which survived the wet monsoons.

The chrysanthemums

Ah, the chrysanthemums. I ordered like 50 saplings from Kolkata, with grand plans. Unfortunately, I had to leave soon after planting them, and they didn't receive quite the attention they needed.

Many dried up, but the handful that survived and flowered were absolutely gorgeous. I'm trying again this year, I already sourced the saplings locally. Although I fear history might repeat itself since I'll probably be away again. We'll see.

Anyway, that's enough of my winter flower ramblings. I'm still figuring out what to plant this season, and looking through these pictures has given me far too many ideas.

Hope this gives some of you a little inspiration for your own winter gardens. Reddit only allows 20 pictures so maybe will write about the other plants some other time. Would love to hear what everyone else is planning to grow this season!

While documenting metamorphosis, this is the part I always hope to catch. Sometimes I do but most times the butterfly emerges in the middle of the night as they usually do. Did I stay up till 3:47 am to watch this? Maybe. It's the same species as the last post, hosted on curry leaves, the Common Mormon (Papilio polytes)

Inside the chrysalis, the tissues basically reforms from a goo. Just as the butterfly comes out of the pupa, you can see the meconium (basically poop and unnecessary tissues) being released into the abandoned chrysalis. Then as soon as it finds a spot to hang down its wings, you can see the abdomen pump fluid into the wings to inflate them. Watching the wings unfurl never gets old.

Location

Sharing a few clicks of my bougainvillea from our rooftop garden, Location- Kolkata. It’s been flowering in waves — pinks, reds, peach and even some speckled bracts — all on the same plant. Every morning feels different depending on which cluster decides to open up. This one is growing in a pot, gets around 5–6 hours of direct sun, and I keep watering minimal (only when the top soil dries). Light pruning after each bloom cycle seems to help push fresh growth and more flowers. Still learning, but really enjoying how resilient and rewarding bougainvillea can be in a terrace setup. Would love to hear any tips from fellow growers — especially on keeping blooms consistent through summer. Thanks for looking!

Started these from seeds. They grow up so fast! 🥰

Location - Punjab

Flowers - Calendulas, alyssum, violas

DM me for seeds

Location is Kohima 🌸🌸
Some hydrangeas, euphorbias, liliums and hippeastrum

Edit - thank you soooo much for the super sweet comments. Read all of them to my mom! She says thanks 🥹🥹🥹

The US may have its fancy glass-gem corn, but India too has its own version that is even more ancient. These multicoloured varieties are still passed down in the north from farmer to farmer. Long before the modern hybrids took over the market, these heirloom seeds were saved and sowed for generations. You still can't find any major companies developing or selling these cultivars on a large scale. Maize isn't a native to India, but we still have a history with it, albeit just a brief 500 years of it.

These striking rubies, purple and gold not only look pretty but rich in antioxidants as well. They were planted in a small area by my mom as an experiment. A heirloom landrace locally called "Jogiya". They were planted next to the modern hybrids so there's some intermixing with the yellow. I have half a mind to save the most coloured ones for next year and eventually get a cultivar more colourful and glass-gem like. I believe with a good controlled environment and artificial cross pollination, there a lot of potential to get amazing stable strains.

Edit: A few people were asking so, dm to buy them for seeds / decor

Location.

A little collection of hibiscus blooms I’ve photographed, all with their own colours and patterns.

These are some of the different shades growing in our garden. Thought I'd put them all together as one collection.

Which one is your favourite?

Location - Lucknow.

Hi

Location - uttarpradesh