A beautiful home is priceless, but even better, one with a small garden is incomparable.
Although trees and flowers make a home feel like paradise, sometimes, such might not be important when need or necessity beckons.
To reap optimal benefits from your compound, you must incorporate both grandeur plants and those you can use as herbs, fruits and spices.
This requires setting up a functional garden in your compound. But how do you go about it? Below are a few suggestions.
Plan your space
Having a garden in your compound calls for space. Joseph Ssemaganda, a designer and chief executive officer of Best Choice Gardeners, Kampala, says planning for a big compound is not the same as planning for a small one.
He recommends the drawing of paddocks in your space for the different gardens. Here, you should keep in mind the plants you will use.
Ssemaganda advises that you have similar items in one place.
“This will enable the plants to grow well together, besides being orderly,” he says.
“If you start with mint, for example, then in another paddock, there should be wheat grass and another oregano.”
On the other hand, you can also decide to draw your garden according to the values you attach to each plant, including herbs, spices, fruits and vegetables.
Ssemaganda says designing a functional home garden depends on how you want the compound to look.
If you have limited space, but would like to engage in gardening, do not worry — there is a solution for that. You can opt for pot or raised gardening.
A pocket garden can be a small area in your compound or veranda that you can use to have a few plants of your choice.
Often, Ssemaganda says such plants can be in a vessel of your choice, including a pot, bottle or basin.
He explains that one needs a rack for some plants, while another can use pots or baskets by hanging them on the wall. You can also put spices or herbs and use them depending on the design you prefer, whether horizontal or vertical.
Moreover, one can also use raised gardening. Ssemaganda says one can create these gardens above the ground using wood or concrete and plant their desired items.
These help in using the little space one has instead of lamenting over what they lack.
Inside the home
Perhaps you do not want your garden outside the compound: You prefer to veer off the conventional way things are done.
Bony Odongo, the proprietor of Pearl Craft and Garden Shop, Kampala, says you can have a garden inside your house.
“Such plants can help in the purification of the air and keep away dust,” he says.
“But some can also be medicinal besides bringing relaxation to the room.”
Odongo says such crops include cacti, aloe vera, Aglaonema rotundum, mother-in-law plants and Liparis monoceros.
For such plants to thrive, Ssemanda advises one to put them in a place where they can access indirect light.
Planting fruits
If you desire to live healthy and cut costs, you might be over-ambitious and want to plant all the fruit trees you can think of.
However, Moses Mbaziira, a gardener and proprietor of Potting Shed International, Garuga on Entebbe Road, advises against it.
“Before you think of a fruit tree to grace your garden, you must know how deep its roots are, otherwise the aggressive roots can pose a danger to your garden,” he says.
Mbaziira points out that these roots escape through the foundation of the wall fence, thus cracking and putting it at risk of crumbling.
Moreover, one should also be mindful of the height.
Sometimes, Mbaziira says fruit trees can be infested with insects that can spread to the entire backyard garden and compound greenery.
“If the trees scale up, you can fail to spray because of their height,” he says.
But they can also pose a danger to your household since huge branches can fall off and harm a person or the house. In case you want to carry out backyard gardening,
Mbaziira says you should enlist the help of an expert to advise on how best to place your fruit trees.
Grafted avocados, mangoes, lime, guava trees and palms are some of the best trees you can plant because their roots do not go deep. But those with a bigger compound can use any trees they want.
Why should you have a garden in your home
Most African homes in the past used to have vegetables and herbs. Dr David Ssali of Dama Medical Herbs says these could be used as first aid in the home.
Plants like aloe vera and omululuza (Vernonia amygdalina) could be used for malaria, while omwetango (lamb’s quarters) was for toothache.
Today, if you go into people’s homes, such vital medicinal plants are no longer existent. Besides that, you enjoy vegetables at no cost.
“Ever since I started growing vegetables in my home, I have cut the cost of buying vegetables,” reveals Betina Namusoke, who grows sukuma wiki (collard greens) in her home garden in Wakiso.
Besides that, Namusoke says her vegetables are chemical-free.
“Therefore, I can safely put them in my smoothies and salads,” she says. Namusoke says she enjoys the convenience of not going to the market because she has her own garden.
“Sometimes, you just want to eat something in its freshness with no hassle of rushing to the market,” she says Namusoke also grows tomatoes and green pepper.
