Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Bamboo in The Garden

  • The Bamboo Store is launching Garden Mania: A bamboo garden accessories festival to celebrate the onset of spring. A range of garden accessories in bamboo will be available from The Bamboo Store, N-11, Rear Lane, N Block Market, Greater Kailash Part I, New Delhi-110048 throughout the month of March.

    Bamboo is ideal for gardens, both as a planting material and for garden furniture and accessories. Firstly it is a natural bio-degradable material and therefore scores high on the eco-friendly point of view. Secondly, bamboo has a natural charm that adds greatly to the garden’s beauty - think of sweeping bamboo stands, the wind whispering through them. Think of a melodious bamboo wind-chime adding a lovely musical note … I could go on !!

    Reams have been written about the invasive nature of the bamboo plant, how it takes over the entire garden, its vast network of roots and shoots spreading wide. However, all that fear is exaggerated. You can take several measures to restrict bamboo in the garden to the spaces you want it to be present –
    1. plant the bamboo is sturdy pots and bury them in the garden,
    2. line the sides of the trench where the bamboo is to be planted with tin/aluminium sheets or a layer of bricks

In terms of garden accessories and furniture, the sky is the limit as far as using bamboo is concerned. Here are just some of the things that can be done in bamboo which we are stocking at the Bamboo Store:
· planters
· bird-houses
· bird-feeders
· chairs
· tables
· swings
· candlestands
· flares (mashaals)
· garden umbrellas
· fences
· gazebos
· garden lamps
· deer-scares
· sculptures
· wind-chimes

You don’t have to have a huge garden to have bamboo in it. Even a small terrace or balcony will do – get some lovely bamboo plants in pots and use it as a screen. Hang up some bird feeders, bird-houses, a wind-chime, a couple of bamboo planters with seasonal or succulents and voila! Your bamboo retreat is ready. If space permits, throw in a bamboo and fabric garden umbrella, a couple of bamboo loungers and you can relax in your bamboo paradise !

Friday, February 1, 2008

IS BAMBOO HOT/HAUTE TODAY?

Bamboo is fast emerging as a “haute” design medium in the Western world these days with several top-notch design awards coming its way. Check out “HAUTE GREEN 2007” at http://www.inhabitat.com/category/nydesignweek2007/

What makes bamboo such an attractive option for home décor now? Well, there are several reasons as to why bamboo is so popular nowadays. Perhaps, the greatest reason is that bamboo makes for great ecological sense in today’s environmentally fragile world. Deforestation and excessive industrialization has taken their toll and people across the globe are battling with the ill effects of global warming and climate change. Bamboo is an easily renewable resource, capable of regenerating in a shorter time than trees. Typically, bamboos mature in 3-5 years as compared to most tree species which take anything between 12-20 years to grow fully. This makes bamboo a more sustainable resource to harvest and use regularly as replacement for wood which is becoming increasingly scarce. Given the fact that bamboo has similar strength and properties as wood, it is a viable alternative to wood for use in home, garden and office décor. Bamboo is also called wonder lumber as it does not need too many preparations to use – it can be used as is. This minimal need for preparation makes it a good choice to metals and plastics, which require a lot of resources and input to be prepared, even in the raw form.
Another reason for bamboo’s popularity is that it brings in a whiff of Nature into living spaces like no other material. The warm natural tone of bamboo, its singular elegance is a total contrast to the cold hi-tech glamour of glass and chrome, or the pop art colours of plastic. It is hard to resist the charm of a well-proportioned bamboo sofa, looking as though it has brought the fresh green outdoors inside your room.

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Why Bamboo Matters?

The title of this blog Bamboo Matters is a play on words – it is about bamboo matter as in bamboo stuff but it is also about why bamboo matters. In that context, I would like to relate a tale, which was in a way, a major turning point in my life. 10 years ago, I traveled with an official from the UN, Ecuador from New Delhi to Guwahati, Assam. It was a clear and sunny day and we could see miles below us as we flew over the Gangetic Plain. To my real surprise, the visitor had tears in his eyes. He looked down with great sadness at the vast expanse below, dry and dusty except where rivers meandered through, the small plots marked out looking even more miniscule viewed from so many miles up in the air. I asked him what was wrong and why he was crying? He said “ Now I understand why there are hardly any tigers in India. There is hardly any jungle left. In Latin America, if we were to take a flight for two hours across any country, all we can see is a sea of green. Our forests are still living. You have no forests left in India All I can see is dry earth”. I was left speechless, the bare truth of what he was saying lying in front of my eyes in the patchwork of fields below us, the ochre, browns and yellows making for a pretty sight. But it was a deceptive beauty. Man’s need for more land for crops and for habitation had been at a real cost – we truly have destroyed our jungle. I decided then and there that I would do something to save our forests. Bamboo as an easily renewable resource is a good alternative to wood and by promoting the use of bamboo in myriad forms, be it for furniture, construction, home décor and even charcoal, we will be preventing the chopping down of trees. We need more and more people to join the bamboo movement simply because in the last ten years, tigers have well and truly disappeared from India and we need to keep forests alive to save even more species from extinction. Therefore bamboo matters a lot!!

Saturday, January 19, 2008

Selling Bamboo is No Cakewalk

Selling bamboo in India is not an easy task - there are many battles to be fought and many prejudices to overcome ! Am I overstating the case? Well just read on....... Bamboo in most parts of India except for the Northeast is considered to be poor man's timber, a pejorative association that is hard to beat. In complete contrast in Northeast India where we hail from, Bamboo is the Staff of Life, omnipresent from birth to death and is thus greatly respected. When we first began working with bamboo in Delhi, we had people very rudely ask us what in blazes were we trying to do with baans ( the Hindi word for bamboo). We were repeatedly told our products were too expensive even though we have always charged fair prices. I remember one particularly elegant bamboo tripod lamp - I once had a client say that they were not going to pay for three sticks of bamboo. Those were the days when no one gave a thought to global warming, let alone climate change and there were plenty of forests still around to be cut down. However, we persisted and over the years have created more than 250 products and have raised awareness about the viability of bamboo to replace wood and plastics. A measure of how much India has changed and how much more conscious people have become of the environment is the fact that now people commend us for working with eco-friendly bamboo.

Friday, January 18, 2008

The Bamboo Store

Inspired by our passion for bamboo and fired by a zeal to promote this miracle grass, we have opened The Bamboo Store. Located at N-11, Rear Lane N-block Market, Greater Kailash Part I , New Delhi, The Bamboo Store is a small store with big dreams - to make bamboo a truly viable alternative to wood and plastics. We are trying to showcase the myriad uses of bamboo and are stocking up on bamboo crafts such as basketry and home accessories, bamboo shoots ( healthy and nutritious treats), and a host of industrial bamboo products such as flooring, charcoal, blinds, etc. We even have books on bamboo in Hindi , English and several Indian languages. The idea is to present real ways to be more eco-friendly - not just hot air but actual action on the ground. Bamboo is a truly renewable resource, with most species maturing in 3-5 years as compared to 12-20 years for most tree species. Bamboo also serves as Nature's Band-Aid - its extensive root systems bind soil and prevents soil erosion, it grows rapidly and helps in restoring green cover and clearing air pollution. Many species of bamboo are comparable to wood and steel in strength and can be used as alternatives in construction ( homes, bridges, etc.) and for furniture. Bamboo is often called wonder lumber because it does not need intensive pre-processing - it can be used as is, its hollow, cylindrical form lending it great adaptability. Come, get lost in the wonder world of bamboo at The Bamboo Store.

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Bamboo Matters

I have spent 15 years of my life promoting bamboo in India along with my husband Shahriyar. In 1992, we founded the Earth & Grass Workshop - the Earth derived from our ongoing interest in terracotta and grass referring to our life-long passion bamboo. Why bamboo? Well, we are both from Northeast India where bamboo reigns supreme. Perhaps our first memories are of vibrant green groves of bamboo, with the wind gently singing through them; perhaps it is the memory of 'chunga pitha', sticky rice cooked in a particular bamboo, the speicality being that the bamboo softened by the heat can be peeled like a banana !! Perhaps, it was the bamboo housing we saw as we drove along !! Whatever the reason, suffice to say that we both love bamboo and in farawy Delhi, as dry and dusty as can be and as far removed from the verdant green of our home state, we decided to do something to highlight bamboo. Today, we have our own store in Delhi called what else but The Bamboo Store where we showcase all that bamboo can offer - bamboo shoot for food, bamboo furniture, craft, basketry, flooring, gardenware and much more !! There is really no limit to what bamboo can be - with over 1500 documented uses of bamboo, you can imagine how many bamboo things there are worldwide.