KATHMANDU, Dec 9: Everyone loves flowers. But finding flowers around the capital is a tough ask. Rapid urbanization has limited the number of parks and gardens in the valley. 

The tradition of giving gifts has been practiced for some time now. However, giving flowers as gifts is less likely. People normally give clothes, electronic gadgets, guitars and other items as gift.  But hardly are tulips, roses and sunflowers received as gifts today. This may have resulted from lack of nurseries in town. 

Though the city has limited nurseries, some brands have equally evolved in the market, making themselves fully supportive to gardening. One of them is ‘I Am The Gardener’. Founded by Biraj Khadka and Kewal Risal in 2016, the brand has been supportive to indoor plantation since its inception. The brand has been selling ready-made gardening materials which include various equipments needed for plantation, seeds, and so on. 

Before the commencement of the store, they only had a concept about it. In a conversation with MyCity, Khadka shared his love for plants. He also said that his intentions to bring a change in the standards of plantation inspired him to come up with this venture. Explaining more, he added, “Normally, people consider this as a blue collared work; a work which only non-educated people bother to try their hands on. But we wanted to do something to change people’s perceptions to this job.  This inspired us to initiate ‘I Am The Gardener’.”

Despite the fact that Khadka and Risal have been a part of this this brand for 3 years, they have an ever-growing challenge. Before their beginning, they weren’t sure they would get a suitable manpower for the job. So, it was pretty hard for them to find the appropriate manpower for gardening. “It was hard to find people because they were barely interested to invest in gardening. Finding resources and a proper place for gardening was a daunting task. We normally import goods for gardening. During our early days, importing resources was our pain,” Khadka lamented recalling the hurdles to starting the business.   However, Khadka still finds importing and finding resources as a painstaking work in the gardening business. 

The challenges are painstaking, but the founders have big goals. They want to enlarge their business all across Nepal. “We will enjoy if importing becomes easy in the coming days. Also, we are hoping to have gardening center all around the country so that our products be available all over the country,” Khadka added.