From the International Garden Festival, Blois, France.

Recently I had the opportunity to visit the International Garden Festival which was held in Blois, France.



The festival was partitioned into various theme parks, whose colour changes for every season according to the choice of flowers. There were also beautiful theme colour parks based on natural materials, glass, bamboo, sand etc. which jell well with the flowers in the parks.




I have tons of photos, but I present may be one flower per day...And yes, I should thank my friends Sandrine Gicquel and Sebastien Rousseau for having taken me there driving all the way from Paris...



Have a nice day...!!

Vinca Rosea or Periwinkle

This is a medicinal plant. Its alkaloids are hypotensive, sedative and have tranquilising properties and are anti cancerous. It helps in relieving muscle pain, depression of central nervous system and wasps stings.




It is called as Nithyakalyani in Malayalam. The active ingredients of this plant are used for a variety of allopathic drugs and ayurvedic drugs especially for the treatment of hypertension and for neuro medicine. It comes with different colours and also sometimes as mix of two or three colours.

The innovative Rikshaw

This was another thing of interest that I noticed in Paris.

This is a manual/semi automatic (it also has a small motor attached for taking uphills) cycle rickshaw, but with a roof so that you are protected from the sun and the rain. The roof is aero-dyanamic and was easy to ride than a typical Indian Cycle Rickshaw. The pedaling was comfortable too.



We asked the person who was operating this service whether he was a paid employee. He said that the vehicle was given to him by the company, but he is all by himself as the company is not paying any salary to him.





Isn't it time we also have some of theseeco-friendly vehicles?

Coquelicot Flowers

This is the Coquelicot Flower which I happen to fall in love while in Paris in the last week of June 2009. The French pronounce it as Ko-kli-ko. It looks like a poppy flower with red and a tinge of orange and is seen growing wild all over the railway tracks and country side. The lighting was not good and I could manage only this photo.

Rangoon Creeper

This is Rangoon Creeper or Quisqualis indica. We used to have this in our ancestral house and one portion of our Mangalore tiled portico was completely covered with this plant like a curtain! I dont know what is the local name of this plant, but we used to call it Madras Mulla then.

The flowers change their colours from white to pink and then red and has a nice fragrance too.

Apparently this plant has some medicinal properties too which I learnt only now. The plant is used for traditional medicine like Decoctions of the root, seed or fruit can be used as anti-helmintic or for alleviating diarrhea. Fruit decoction can also be used for gargling. The fruits are also used to combat nephritis. Leaves can be used to relieve pain caused by fever. The roots are used to treat rheumatism. But be careful before you try anything of these, as dosages, concentrations are very important for ayurvedic or plant based medicines.

Ivy Gourd - A creeper so useful...

What you see here are flowers and fruit of a very common creeper called as Kovakkai in Tamil and Malayalam, Telakucha in Bengali, Tondikay in Kannada, Bimbika in Sansrit, Kundru in Hindi etc. Its common English name is Ivy Gourd or little gourd and scientific name is Coccinia grandis.

The fruits are used as a vegetable and it can be eaten raw also which has a nice taste when it is tender. You can also make pickles, Indian curries like Sambar, as an ingredient in Aviyal – a curry having a mixture of many vegetables prepared in a gravy of curd. And if you want to have it as crispy snacks, just cut them into small rings and fry it in oil with salt if you want.

The fruit is commonly eaten in Indian cuisine. Natives of Thailand, Indonesia, and other Southeast Asian countries also consume the fruit and leaves. Cultivation of ivy gourd in home gardens has been encouraged in Thailand due to its being a good source of several micro-nutrients, including vitamins A and C.

In India, ivy gourd is often recommended to diabetics due to its low glycemic index and its possible ability to help regulate blood glucose. Ivy gourd is rich in beta-carotene and it also is a good laxative.

In Hawaii and the southern United States, among other regions, ivy gourd is considered an invasive plant. There is a variety of this plant which is utterly bitter and which is invasive in India too.

So still need more info? Go and get your Vitamins at home itself. Grab a cutting of the plant from somewhere and plant it today itself. Or you can also raise seedlings from a ripe fruit of the plant. But before that make sure you are planting the non-bitter variety of the plant.

Hibiscus - a common flower and some interesting facts!

Today I thought I will write about the common Hibiscus flower which are so common to most of us. There are varieties and varieties of hibiscus with different colours, different petal arrangements and so on. Here is the photo of a flower from our own mini-garden!


Now some interesting facts about the flower. This is used as flower, a vegetable, a herb, a cosmetic and what not! The vegetable roselle is a hibiscus variety and is used in South India for making chutneys, pickles and even curries. Hibiscus juice is another attraction where hibiscus flowers are immersed in lemon juice and processed to get a very tasty juice concentrate!. Women use hibiscus leaves and flowers for hair-care by making a shampoo of it and this is a natural treatment for hair fall and dandruff. Just pick a handful of leaves and a few flowers and scrub on a rocky surface (usually ponds are lined with rocky plates in Kerala) with a bit of water and you get a rick, bubbling shampoo. It is no-cost and healthy too. Again petals of hibiscus are used in treatment of fever and its roots have properties which cure cough. Dieters or persons with kidney problems often take it without adding sugar for its beneficial properties and as a natural diuretic. It is made by boiling the dehydrated flowers in water; once it is boiled, it is allowed to cool and drunk with ice. So go home and make some hibiscus juice right away!

Hibiscus flowers have also other values. The red flowers are offered the Goddess of Kali and Ganesh. As kids, we used to remove the petals from the flower and then blow through the tiny openings at the base of the petal and the petal will blow up a bit like a balloon. It seems children in Philippines make bubbles with hibiscus flower and leave extraction by blowing into the solution by using hollow papaya stalks.

Now some humour also. Wearing a single hibiscus flower on only one of your ears is symbol of being a lunatic person in Kerala (India). (Normally depicted in films though I have not seen any lunatics doing this in real life). But if the wearer of the flower on a single ear is Hawaiian woman it has a different meaning. A single flower tucked behind the ear indicates that the woman is available for marriage. Interesting ...isn't it?