Bangalore’s Lalbagh road is very busy, crowded with heavy vehicular and pedestrian traffic. One of the roads that connects the City to South Bangalore, it is crammed with showrooms, lodges, the iconic MTR and the nurseries.
Stop at a patch of green that you would blink and miss on the busy Lalbagh Main road, and you may have stumbled on one of the oldest nurseries in that area – Obalappa and Brothers.
“This nursery was started four generations back by my great grandfather Kadrappa and his brother Obalappa in 1885. Since Obalappa didn’t have any children, the nursery was named after him,” explains Vasuki Soumendra, the current proprietor. So that’s why it is Obalappa and brothers, not sons, I mused. Apart from production and selling, today, Obalappa also handles landscaping contracts for corporate and huge residential complexes.
Royal connections
Some of their earliest customers hailed from royal families, including the Maharaja of Travancore and the Maharani of Mysore. During the British era, nurseries abounded around Lalbagh. In fact, the Obalappas’ land was spread across 20 to 30 acres. Vasuki points out that a part of their land was acquired during Lalbagh expansion. “Where is the remaining land?” I quizzed. “The land eventually was divided among family members down the generations. Some of these buildings around the nursery belong to my relatives,” he points out. Today the small patch of green is just a marketing outlet while he maintains nurseries outside the City on the Bangalore Mysore highway and Electronics city. Many successful nurseries in the region have done just that. While they do sell and maintain outlets in the area, they also have huge land in the neighbouring villages around the city for wholesale business.
The Krishnendra nursery nestled in the Siddapura is one such example. An offshoot of Y Munivenkatappa and Sons Nursery, it is one of the successful nurseries which have large lands for production near Devanahalli. Krishnappa’s father Munivenkatappa was given this land around the 1940s by the Mysore Government. Krishnappa, its proprieter, recalled the time when Siddapura was full of nurseries. There were around 40 to 50 of them, he said. The tank bund road one sees now had many nurseries. Siddapura was identified for horticulture as the British found the area very suitable for a wide variety of plants. Many of the gardeners belonged to Vahnikula Kshatriyas, a community which came here centuries ago and tended the gardens in and around Bangalore. Eventually they set up nurseries and the entire Siddapura was known for gardening.
The nurseries not only produced ornamental plants for the British gardens but also sold native plants and fruit-bearing trees to its local customers. Krishnappa is nostalgic as he recalls his father’s time, when farmers from North Karnataka would come to Bangalore to buy saplings. A sapling then cost around Rs 2, which might be the same as Rs 100 now, he notes. The farmers brought their food – rotis and chutney - packed from home and slept at the nursery as the commute was long and arduous. The saplings they bought would be transported in a bullock cart to the train station, sent by train and reach their farms on a bullock cart.
Today, Krishnappa is ecstatic to see some of the same farms whose owners were his father’s customers. Today the nurseries have both wholesale and retail business. The nurserymen share plant saplings as not all nurserymen grow all the plants themselves. Many of the nurserymen belong to the Nurserymen’s Co-operative society Limited formed in 1964. Mari Gowda, Director of Horticulture, Lalbagh, is a venerable figure to many of the nurserymen as he started the society and warded off acquisition of land in Siddapura. However, it seems inevitable today, as builders have slowly encroached upon the area.
Though the area comes under a horticulture zone, many nurseries have succumbed to temptation of rising land cost. Just opposite the Krishnendra Nursery is a neat set of apartments.
The road is narrow and winding and it nestles beside another nursery. Yet, the area still has many nurseries left. Small-time sellers who have potted saplings on either side of the road give one a hint that there is still some green belt left.
Some of the leading nurseries in and around Lalbagh are Obalappa and Brothers nursery, Devappa and Sons, Sri Maruti Nursery. Siddapura is full of nurseries such as Krishnendra nursery, Prakash nursery, Pillaiah and sons, Srinivas nursery and Munivenkatappa nurseries.
As the city expands, this area is still considered as the place to go to, if one is looking for a sapling, advice or tools on gardening. As Krishnappa, says very confidently, “One can find any plant from any part of India in Siddapura.”