Eco Action
One public park in Vasant Kunj went from five per cent green cover to ninety, over a decade. That is the whole argument for this project.
What we do
Over 70 butterfly parks and over 20 herb gardens across Delhi NCR.
090
What it sets out to do
Plant so that something arrives
The test of a butterfly park is whether an insect nobody invited turns up. It is a slow test and it cannot be staged for a camera.
Be wanted after the money stops
A garden lasts because somebody needs what is in it. The aim is a plot a neighbourhood would defend, since the alternative ending is tarmac.
Depth on one site, not a layer on fifty
On airshed work the intent is a decade in a single park with the green cover measured at each end. It is the only version of this that anybody can check.
A park nobody needs gets paved.
Which is why usefulness is the maintenance plan and not a nice extra.
Strategy and activities
It is always somebody else's land
These are public parks and institutional grounds, not our sites. Which means every one of them needed a permission before it needed a plant.
Butterfly parks
You do not build one, you plant one: host plants for the caterpillars, nectar plants for the adults, and then you leave it alone long enough for something to find it. Over seventy of them, across Delhi NCR.
A school garden of ours, planted into old tyres by the students.
Herb gardens
The same trick, aimed at people. Over twenty of them, planted where somebody will actually pick from them. Usefulness is what keeps a garden alive after the funding ends.
A cultivated bed at our farm.
Airshed parks
Ten years is the honest unit for this kind of work, and ten years is why almost nobody does it. Vasant Kunj is the park we have taken all the way.
Who it is for
Whoever already walks through the park
These are public parks, so the people this is for are the ones who were going to be there anyway. Nobody is enrolled in a butterfly park.
The insects
Said plainly, because it is the design brief. A butterfly park is built to be found by something that was never invited.
The institutions holding the land
Schools, offices and civic bodies with ground they are not using. What they get back needs less water and less mowing than lawn.
The people who will pick from it
Herb gardens are planted for use. If nobody harvests it, the garden has failed on its own terms rather than on ours.
Impact
70+
Butterfly parks across Delhi NCR
20+
Herb gardens across Delhi NCR
5% → 90%
Green cover in one Vasant Kunj park
over a decade
Over seventy parks, over twenty gardens
Across Delhi NCR. PVR, American Express and Adobe behind the butterfly parks; Amazon and American Express behind the herb gardens.
One park, five per cent to ninety
The Vasant Kunj airshed park, over a decade of work, with The American Embassy behind it. It is one park.
What it looks like
Eco Action, from the archive
Who it is with
Funders by name.
- PVR
- American Express
- Adobe
- Amazon
- The American Embassy
Get involved
Plant one with us
Straight to a person
This goes to Vimlendu Jha, Swechha’s Executive Director.
Or write to vimlendu@swechha.in.
Fund this work
Straight to a person
This goes to Vimlendu Jha, Swechha’s Executive Director.
Or write to vimlendu@swechha.in.
If you hold a patch of public or institutional ground in Delhi, that is the thing this project is short of.
Projects
Bridge the Gap
A module-based curriculum on land, water and air — five to sixteen sessions, plus exposure trips and action projects.
3M+ children and young people reached
Projects
Farm School
A learning lab on five acres. Day visits, short courses, internships and stays.
30 school groups a year
The evidence
The record
Every reading the situation pages are built on, in one place.
Every situation, side by side