In recent months, the office has been engaged in various activities ranging from awareness-raising programmes and exhibitions to providing incentives for the city’s denizens to embrace rooftop agriculture. The office hopes that Kathmandu’s residents, many of whom live in cramped localities, will see the value of growing their own produce on their own rooftops.

The concept of turning rooftops into greenhouses and such is a product of the urban farming and greenery movement. In the past few years, the authorities at KMC have seen the need to push the idea too. But what might these rooftops farms look like?

If one were looking for a prototype, one could refer to what 80-year-old Indra Kumari Shrestha and her family have been working on for almost five years now. On the terrace on top of her three-storeyed house, in Paris Danda in Koteshwor, Shrestha has created a mini-kitchen garden. On that terrace, Indra Kumari and her family grow not just vegetables but also many types of fruits, such as grapes, guavas, lemons, oranges and pomegranates.

The family decided to get into rooftop farming more out of necessity than out of any need to try something novel. “We were tired of the way the price of the vegetables kept increasing in the market, and we also wanted to stop consuming the pesticides-laced produce sold in the Valley,” says Indra’s daughter, Mina Kumari Shrestha, who lives with her mother in Koteshwor, along with her son. “Today, we have the privilege of eating fresh vegetables and herbs almost throughout the year,” she says.  According to Mina, the plan was actually derived from a similar garden that had been set up in her husband’s home, in Bagbazaar, almost a decade ago. And as with Indra Kumari’s family, her husband’s too had gone with rooftop gardening because they didn’t have a backyard at their disposal.

The construction plans for such gardens are pretty simple. All  that  the Shrestha family have done is waterproof their roof’s surface and erect a two-foot-tall second wall parallel to the terrace-wall that skirts the edges. They grow different climbers and hybrid fruit plants in the space thus created. To support the climber species of vegetables and fruits, like grapes, Indra Kumari has used bamboo stakes as scaffolding and tied the plants’ stems to them with jute strings and copper wire coated with plastic. The plants are stuck into mulched soil, and a large portion of the rooftop also houses numerous earthen pots, many of which have been used for growing vegetables and flowers.

“As long as rooftop gardeners use great mulch with their soil, it’s easy to grow vegetables like brinjal, tomato, spring onion, radish and capsicum, salad greens like cucumber and lettuce leaf and essential herbs like coriander, mint, green chilly and so on,” says Indra Kumari.

There’s an added benefit to rooftop gardening for people like her. At 80, Indra Kumari maintains an active lifestyle, thanks to her efforts to keep her garden in bloom.  “My mornings and evenings are spent working on this small patch of garden,” she says.

And then there are of course the benefits of savings. “We save around Rs 300 on vegetables per day,” she says. “We pluck at least three or four varieties of them from our garden every day, which is sufficient to meet our daily needs. We even send samples as koseli (gifts) to relatives,” she adds. The savings add up: every month the family save close to Rs 9,000 on their groceries.

The Shrestha family’s neighbours have taken note of their green rooftop too. “Our garden is already creating a substantial impact on our community. Our neighbours have also tried to come up with similar setups,” says Indra Kumari. But not everyone needs to go the same route as the Shresthas if they want to create a rooftop garden. The waterproofing procedure can be expensive for some, and there needs to be a reliable water supply to make things work. These problems can be overcome by employing methods such as rooftop water-harvesting and overlaying tarp and plastic on the terrace floor.

For those who can afford the fixtures, the KMC’s Rabin Man Shrestha, the chief of the office’s Environment Management Division, says that the rooftop farming initiative is a great project to take up on.

The KMC office has already asked some Kathmanduites to hop on board. “A handful of houses in wards 15 and 34 have already started growing vegetables such as tomatoes,” says Rabin Man Shrestha. At least 15 houses in Chamati have made exemplary use of their rooftop gardens by cultivating organic vegetables. Similarly, around 200 families have already applied for support from KMC to install similar rooftop kitchen gardens.

The KMC facilitates the initiative by choosing the households that are interested in constructing these gardens on their own. “We have received a number of applications via ward offices. But since we  can’t accommodate too many houses in our first phase, we haven’t made a public announcement about the project as yet,” says Rabin Man Shrestha. The maximum cost per household for creating a rooftop garden should be in the region of Rs 5,000. “We will provide the households with picks, spades and other necessary tools. We’ll also provide drums and baskets for growing produce,” says Rabin Man Shrestha. If more locals in the Valley follow Indra Kumari’s lead, and with the KMC’s assistance, the Valley might see oases of green roofs soon dotting the cityscape.