Nationwide, even as the popularity of allopathy has grown in the last few decades, things are slowly turning around for the alternative sciences. And, closer home, in the village of Chandel in Pernem taluka, students of Hutatma Bapu Gawas Memorial Government High School have taken it upon themselves to cultivate a herbal garden . In Goa, Chandel was known for its system of herbal medicine, but with time its residents lost touch and eventually this traditional knowledge was lost.“In 2016, we decided to introduce agriculture as a subject at the secondary level because we wanted to tap this knowledge of herbal medicine among parents of our students,” says headmistress of Hutatma Bapu Gawas Memorial Government High School, Asha Naik, under whose guidance the institute’s teachers and students successfully grew a herbal garden on campus.Students have nurtured plants like adulsa, which is traditionally used to cure colds, or shatavari, which is known to help build immunity.However, the impetus behind the garden lies in the government’s 2015 school herbal garden project. It was the brainchild of nodal officer, State Medicinal Plants Board-Goa, Kuldeep Sharma, who decided to popularise medicinal herb knowledge by providing schools with the necessary plants and some funding.“Our country has a rich vegetal diversity and our board wanted to revive knowledge of traditional herbal medicines,” Sharma says.Teacher Arun Patil credits the success to the students who hail from a rural background and as such live in tune with nature. “The introduction of agriculture as a subject in their curriculum has helped them develop love for these medicinal plants and that is why they tend these plants with utmost care,” Patil says.

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