The kitchen garden at Christian Matriculation Higher Secondary School in Ekkattuthangal has yielded an impressive number of watermelons. Although the gardening exercise is meant for students, the staff residing near the school have been taking turns to water the garden in spite of the COVID-19 lockdown.

“The staff took the pains to visit the school during initial phases of the lockdown because it was summer then and there was the possibility of the plants wilting away in the summer heat. Besides, the efforts put in by our students will go down the drain. The students used to bring vegetable and fruit peels from their houses, have them composted, prepare the soil, water the plants and trim the plants. They have been nurturing the garden ever since its establishment two years ago by the NGC (National Green Corps) unit of the school. We teachers are also passionate about the maintaining garden,” says K. Rajeshwari, a biology teacher in-charge of NGC unit at the school.

The garden has plantain trees, sapota, guava, broad-beans, lady’s-finger, brinjal, tomato, green chillies, and bitter-gourd plants.

“We planted watermelon sapling only in February. Now, it is bearing a lot of fruits. We usually source the saplings from the Tamil Nadu Horticulture Society,” says the teacher.

According to G. Thangaraj, district co-ordinator, NGC, there are many such schools in the city where teachers tended to the garden during the lockdown.