On the roof of a 1,600-square-foot single-storey house in the Shahpur area of Jamalpur town, Tanjid Islam, 26, has lined up cut plastic drums of every size and planted them. The garden now holds about 70 kinds of fruit tree and 50 kinds of flower. He is a seventh-semester civil engineering student at European University of Bangladesh.
The fruit includes orange, grape, guava, malta, cherry, sapodilla, jamun, pomegranate, green apple, dragon fruit and lemon. The flowers include rose, hibiscus, ixora, bougainvillea, night-blooming jasmine, jasmine, crown of thorns and frangipani. He claims to have some foreign plants that nobody else in the district has.
It began in 2012, when he was in class seven. The evening before 21 February he went with his mother to a neighbour's garden to ask for flowers to lay at the Shaheed Minar, and the owner would not give even one. He told his mother that day that he would one day have his own garden.
The family then lived in a tin-roofed house and had no space. He learned planting and care by visiting nurseries and garden owners and watching YouTube. When the roof was cast in December 2022, he started gathering tubs, soil and fertiliser the very next day.
In season the garden gives more than the family needs, and relatives and neighbours share the surplus. He has no wish to sell. On the roof on 31 October, most trees had no fruit, but bougainvillea and hibiscus were in flower.
His mother, Monowara Begum, was unhappy at first and used to scold him. Now she says the family eats safe fruit from its own roof, and the plants keep the house fairly cool.
Source: Prothom Alo
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