A striking fruit garden now grows on the roof of the Chirirbandar upazila primary education office. People living in towns can grow fruit and vegetables on a small scale on the roofs of their buildings and eat produce free of poison every day, adding to national output while meeting their own needs, and the garden on the education office roof is encouraging that idea.

Upazila Primary Education Officer MGM Sarowar Hossain created the rooftop garden on the two-storey office out of a love of nature, as a hobby at his own workplace. Tubs on the roof hold 28 kinds of fruit tree, among them Nagpuri orange, Bhutanese apple, BARI-1 malta, an American mango variety, carambola, grapes, Thai amra, sapodilla, wood apple, sweet tamarind from Thailand, pomegranate, cherry, Thai Seven guava, dragon fruit, latkan, mint, apple kul, hybrid coconut, white cardamom, pear and lemon.

Assistant upazila education officer Motiur Rahman Newton said large flower tubs filled with soil stand in rows across the roof, each holding one fruit tree. Sarowar Hossain has built the garden over a long period with his own money and his own care, spending his free time in it, and colleagues at the office help him.

He set up the garden two years ago on the second-floor roof of the education office in the upazila complex. He said he started with malta, orange and mango saplings, and by the end of the year had picked sweet, tasty malta and mangoes. He then added carambola, pomegranate, sapodilla, lemon, olive, guava, jujube, amra and other fruit trees in stages.

The Chirirbandar upazila agriculture office said town dwellers who grow fruit and vegetables on their roofs can eat poison-free produce every day, meet their own needs and also sell some. The agriculture department will give whatever help rooftop farming requires.

Source: Bangladesh Pratidin. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.