Grow together
Community
Grihvatika is written by the people who grow. Six ways to add to it — a story, a local name, a correction, a garden, a few hours, or your expertise — and every one of them ends up on a page with your name on it.
Our mission says local gardeners can contribute knowledge, so this page is a set of doors rather than a description. A plant record improves the moment somebody who grows the plant in Bundelkhand tells us what it is called there and when it goes in the ground; a correction from a gardener in Kollam is worth more than a paragraph we wrote in Delhi.
What happens to what you send. A person reads it. Corrections go to a botanist. Local knowledge is recorded as belonging to a place and a community, and cited. Stories are published in the Knowledge Centre under your name. Nothing is used anonymously without your say, and nothing is sold.
Garden of the monthLata Ladla — Terrace garden, Dwarka Sector-9, New Delhi
Ten years on one terrace, from four pots to forty varieties. It feeds three households, hosts a Saturday seed table for the block, and has a waiting list of neighbours who want a bed of their own.
3Households fed
10 yrsOn this terrace
40+Varieties grown
Six ways to contribute
Share a plant storyYou grew something, or you remember someone who did. Published in the Knowledge Centre, in your name.→Share local knowledgeA regional name, a household use, a sowing habit particular to your district. Named to its place, credited to you.→Submit a plant correctionA wrong botanical name, a sowing month that does not work where you live. The most valuable thing you can send.→Start a community gardenA vacant strip, four neighbours and a water source. We send a starter plan, seed for your region and a sign for the gate.→Become a Grihvatika volunteerHindi translation, plant photography, school sessions, record checking. A few hours a month is genuinely useful.→Become a knowledge contributorFor botanists, horticulturists, practitioners and field researchers: review records in your area and be named on them.→
And locally, without asking anyone
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Swap seedSave seed from your best plant and trade it over a wall — varieties already adapted to your street, free and better than a packet.🧑🏫
Run a sessionTeach one Saturday workshop. We supply the material and the handouts; you supply the terrace and the tea.
Where the gardens are
34Delhi NCRSeed table monthly
21LucknowGarden of the month
18PuneTerrace network
16BengaluruTwo nurseries partnered
12KolkataSchool gardens led
9AhmedabadRooftop cluster
8DehradunHill-season trials
7AgraRiverbank plantings
6KochiMonsoon growers
Starting one takes four steps
- 1Find the groundA colony park corner, a school boundary, an unused service lane. Twenty square metres is plenty.
- 2Find four peopleFewer and it stalls the first time somebody travels. Four is the smallest number that survives a holiday.
- 3Agree on waterA tap, a tank, or four households carrying cans on a rota. Settle this before you sow anything.
- 4Register with usWe send a starter plan, seed matched to your region, and a printed sign for the gate.
There may already be a garden two streets away.
Register a new plot or find the nearest one — the map is updated every month, and joining an existing garden is the fastest way to start.
