To create awareness on medicinal plants among school students, the Department of Forest & Wildlife along with State Medicinal Plants Board came up with a project of creating a “School Herbal Garden” in government high schools.
Under this project, one school was selected from each taluka and were supplied with 12 different types of medicinal plants.
Each school was selected on the basis of the area needed, provision of the water and fertility of the land.
Hutatma Bapu Gawas Memorial High School, Chandel, Pernem is one such school, which was selected for the Herbal Garden project.
Teachers – Tukaram Kudav and Ashveta along with 16 students contributed towards the
implementation of the project, which helped the students get a practical knowledge of their vocational subject “Constriction & Agriculture”.
The whole process of making the soil more fertile by using fertilisers such as cow dung, planting medicinal plants and watering the same was conducted by the students with the help of their teachers.
Plants such as Artemisia Vulgaris (maan patri), Rauvolfia Serpentina (Adki), Pogostemon Cablin (Patchorli), Centella Asiatica (Bramhi), Acorus Calamus (Vaikhand), Coleus Aromaticus (wattalav), Piper Longum (Pimpli),Cissus Quadrangularis (Hadjod), Ocimum Santrum ( Tulsi), Hemidesmus indicus (Dudh Shiri), Asparagus Racemosus (Shatavari) and Adathoda Vasica (Adulsa) were planted.
The school has used drip irrigation in order to water the plants, which helps in better growth. The area of 100 square metres has been used to make the garden in which each bed of 12 different varieties of plants has been placed.
The project was started in January and most schools either left their projects incomplete or could not save their plants due to lack of water supply.
Drip irrigation helps Hutatma Bapu Gawas Memorial High School to protect its plants. The teachers faced problems such as lack of labour and tools to maintain the garden.
The major problem the teachers and students are facing is lack of knowledge about the subject, which is not provided by the medicinal department due to which they are not able to explain the uses of these medicinal plants.
The students, teachers as well as the locals can buy the plants from the school and grow the same for their personal use.
“The forest department has come up with is very important project. Introducing medicinal plants to the students will improve their knowledge on the traditional use of herbal and medicinal plants especially those studying in cities as they lack knowledge of medicinal plants,” said teacher Tukaram Kudav.
“Medicinal plants have no side effects and are less expensive and when disposed of they do not harm the environment. If such activities are continued at home then people will not have to go to the forests to derive the benefits of medicinal trees,” he added.
“We got to know something new about the plants, which exist in our surroundings and their medicinal value. We also learnt how to plant and the procedure to maintain the same,” the students said.
