Fruit of many varieties covers the roof of a three-storey house. There are 40 kinds of fruit and vegetables here. Mizanur Rahman, a salaried worker, has built the garden over three years. He started it as a hobby, but for the last few years the vegetables and fruit grown here have largely met his family's needs. They also give some fruit to relatives and neighbours.

The three-storey house on Shikkha Office Road in Pirojpur town belongs to Mizanur Rahman and his three brothers, but the rooftop garden was Mizanur's plan. Bottle gourds and pumpkins hang from trellises on the tidy roof, and the bean vines are in colourful flower. Under the bottle gourd trellis are a few chairs and a table, where Mizanur reads the newspaper early in the morning over a hot cup of tea. He tends the garden twice a day, morning and afternoon.

The first rooftop garden in Pirojpur town was started as a hobby in 2012 by a housewife named Fauzia Khandaker; flowering plants were grown in it at first.

Asked why he started, Mizanur Rahman said he began after seeing a garden on the roof of a relative's house. At the start of 2017 he planted various varieties of mango, guava, malta and winter vegetables on the roof. This year he has grown bottle gourd, pumpkin, beans, yardlong beans, cauliflower, cabbage, aubergine, turnip, onion, carrot, tomato, squash, chilli, red amaranth and spinach. His garden also has jujube, sapodilla, custard apple, olive, wax apple, lemon, hog plum, blackberry, white jamun, red pomelo, Vietnamese coconut and year-round jackfruit. In the rainy season he grows okra, Malabar spinach, ash gourd and bottle gourd, and he grows beans and bottle gourd all year. There is also a year-round mango tree.

According to the Pirojpur Sadar upazila agriculture office, rooftop farming began in Pirojpur town 10 to 12 years ago. Rooftops were once used for fruit and flower gardens, but interest in growing vegetables on them has been rising for a few years. The office has records of 12 rooftop gardens in the town in 2015; at present, gardens are being made on the roofs of 15 to 20 houses in the town.

Source: Prothom Alo. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.