Gardening on my terrace is hard work. Almost every year, I resolve to stay away from trying to grow things on its blank concrete expanse. I complain about the bags of soil and sand that must be lugged there from the car park, and the pots and planters that need to be pulled apart from their summer stacks and topped with fresh soil. Later, as seeds sprout and transplants take root, there’s the watering that cannot be skipped, the pests that must be fought and the heartbreak to be had for a gem lettuce devoured by snails or the cucumbers that refuse to pollinate.
Beginnings are as much about trepidation as excitement. My terrace, after all, is a sun-baked, windswept area on the ground floor of a 33-storey high-rise in a Dubai residential community, where the hot season means the end of most plant life. All that’s survived this year is a loyal bougainvillaea, a resilient oleander, a rosemary bush and an Indian rose plant that comes back from the dead every year as the mercury falls. In the wall baskets, the woody remains of the pretty periwinkles I planted in late May remind me of my last attempt to grow anything. They died while we were away for the summer.
Yet the hot summer wind is already beginning to feel like a memory. The sunlight is gentler, the mood more expansive and I cannot help but think of tomatoes ripening right outside my living room, lush fragrant basil to make endless pesto with and rocket and radishes to spice up lunch salads. The terrace is now beginning to suggest itself more as a blank canvas, awaiting ministrations of colour, smell and sound. My mind is abuzz with possibilities, like the bees that will hopefully come to visit the alyssum, asters and sunflowers I plant as companions to my vegetables.
My first foray into seed and soil shopping takes me to Satwa, to what gardeners often refer to as “Plant Street”. There’s hardly a better place in Dubai to feel the pulse of the growing season. The small shops are crammed full to their ceilings with gardening paraphernalia and plants, which spill out onto the pavement in the cooler months, along with bags of potting soil, fertilisers, rolls of shade cloth, PVC piping, bamboo poles, hanging baskets and plastic trays of petunias, marigolds, tomatoes, aubergine, chilli and basil seedlings.
Escaping from the midday sun into the cool darkness of a shop, I find seeds for five varieties of tomatoes: principe Borghese, an Italian heirloom plum tomato that bears grape-sized fruit ideal for drying in the sun; the thin, pointed San Marzano, another plum known for its sweet flesh; gold nugget, a prolific yellow cherry tomato; and two types of my favourite beefsteaks, marmande, a variety I’ve grown before with success, and a new one called cuor di bue. Along with tomatoes, I’ll also be planting rocket, radish, Genovese basil and aubergines. I usually sow the seeds in seeding trays, using regular potting mix, without adding any sand or fertiliser, and make sure the soil is kept moist at all times. Gentle morning or afternoon sun works best for the seeds at this stage.
Before I leave Satwa, I visit a third-floor apartment at the corner of Plant Street. Nivvy’s balcony is a serene little space. She keeps her gardening simple: a curry leaf plant in the corner, and periwinkles and petunias in baskets and containers fixed to the walls, bought from the shops on her street. “It reminds me of Kerala,” she says.
Gardening in cities like Dubai does just that. It connects one with places left behind, but also with new places that become home. It also plugs gardeners, both aspiring and experienced, into the delicious challenge that is being taken up across the world: to grow flowers and food in places that seem to suggest it the least – our cities and their many terraces, rooftops and balconies.
Shumaila Ahmed is a Dubai-based gardener, teacher, researcher and writer. She will be outlining her gardening exploits in a series of columns for Home & Garden.
