A conversation with Ekta Chaudhary, Founder of Garden Up

Written by Payal Khandelwal

“I usually start work at this time as this is when he goes to sleep and takes his longest nap, and this is good enough time for me to sort of warm up to work. When he wakes up at around 2.30 pm, I am already working and have gathered this threshold energy that you usually need to start working. All this division between home and work was easier earlier, but with the baby now, my schedule is based on his schedule.” On a weekday afternoon at around 1 pm, Ekta has just put her baby down for a nap when we start chatting.

Ekta is a teacher, gardener, and founder of the hugely popular YouTube channel (and a full-fledged platform) called Garden Up. She is also a researcher, who spent a decade studying Ecology in Mudumalai, Tamil Nadu and sustainable farming practices among communities in the Himalayas. On her YouTube page, I love this line the most - “Garden Up is…my contribution to a silent, yet powerful green revolution that's taking place in urban homes.”

We will come to the revolution later, for now, let’s hear more of Ekta’s home stories.

She works out of home and I am obviously curious to know how she maintains that balance between work and home life - especially with a one-year-old! “We have an allocated space which we call the ‘work room’ and the whole set up of this room is created in a way that it’s actually quite conducive to work.” She also shoots most of her videos at home so sometimes other spaces also become makeshift workspaces. The physical separation works fairly well for her. “My baby does come and hang out in this room though. We bring his crib over sometimes when he gets scared alone!”

“I also make sure that my weekends are only for home. Currently, I have to work on Saturdays because of a new project so I take off on Mondays, and I schedule my household or personal chores for that day,” she adds.

“Functionality of spaces has become very important for me. For example, I want a workspace which is conducive to work but can feel warm and homely enough after office hours.”

Does she secretly dream about a workspace away from home though?

“When he grows up, then I would probably want that. But for now, this is way more convenient. And I have the luxury to be self-employed, so it works out well for all of us. We are a nuclear family, so I just have the baby to take care of. My team has also been quite welcoming of this set up. So for the next two years or so, I would definitely want to work from home.”

Last December, Ekta and her husband moved from the tuneless city life of Mumbai to the slow and easy rhythms of Navi Mumbai, a planned city adjacent to Mumbai.

“I am so grateful that my husband's job moved here. It has worked out very well for us. I love the roads here, and I have started enjoying driving again. There's a lot of space for me to set up my business and I have the work godown (for the store) close to our house. We can see a lot of greenery from here and of course, we have a lovely balcony - my happy space where I have kept a lot of plants (obviously!) and have put a mirror and some pretty lights. The house is southwest facing so we see beautiful sunsets. There is a partial view of the sea too. Everything here is very easy, accessible. I have got all the good parts of the city life here, but have been able to get rid of a lot of stuff I hated while living in Mumbai.”

“Wow, I sound like a real estate agent for Navi Mumbai (laughs).”

Since the balcony is her happy space, I want to know more stories about what all happens here.

Ekta says, “First of all, I hate drying out clothes in the balcony as it covers the space, but it’s inevitable. So whenever I want to enjoy the space, I end up folding all the clothes first. I often sit here with my coffee. Sometimes, when the baby's cranky, we take him to the balcony and set up his highchair there. My husband can also be found here whenever he wants to run away from us (laughs). So yeah, it’s a happy place for all of us.”

Going away from the balcony and into the house now, I ask Ekta about the most important things/principles for her when it comes to setting up her rental homes.

“There are a few things I am particular about.

Functionality of spaces has become very important for me. For example, I want a workspace which is conducive to work but can feel warm and homely enough after office hours. I have to shoot videos as well, so the living room becomes that space where we put up camera lights during the day and remove them by the evening for it to just be a regular living room.

The other thing is budgets. When we got married, we definitely didn’t want to spend too much money on the first rental home we moved into, as that didn’t make financial sense for us at that time. So we brought in secondhand and rental furniture into our home. We ended up getting some really lovely pieces from Oshiwara Furniture Market including a nice Parsi wooden almirah and a couch. We really slowly upgraded our furniture in line with our finances. Now we are in the fifth year of our marriage, and I think we finally don’t have any rental furniture. The other side to that is that we also want it to feel like our ‘home’, even though it’s a rental space. So sometimes, I do end up spending a little extra on things I like - the curtains of this house, for example.

We also keep in mind that we move a lot, from one rental to another, so nothing should be too fragile which can get damaged during the move.”

In terms of the decor, Ekta likes open spaces and lots of neutrals. She has interestingly brought in a little bit of black recently to complement the neutrals. Did she have to adapt her decor sensibilities to set up her baby’s space?

She tells me that right now the baby and his crib share the couple’s room. He also spends a lot of time in the living room. She didn’t have to change many things in the home to accommodate him except for baby proofing everything. “We do have this one bookcase though that we have to guard him from still, and I have been trying to figure out how to do that.”

“I also realised that I have already lived almost half my life on this planet and if I just keep collecting, my life will be so cluttered, so I have to let go.”

Is she into slowly evolving her home with time or is there another approach?

“I think we have officially become like a rental-moving-couple (laughs). We've already changed five houses since we got married. So yeah, earlier I wanted to move and just get done with everything at one go but I now realise that doing things a bit slowly is a nice process.

I do feel that everything in the house should have its specific place, to make the house more organised and functional - especially if both the partners are working and also taking care of the house. A messy house definitely has negative energy to it. And a good way to avoid that is by having a robust and intuitive organisation system. But having said that, I hate having two big cupboards in the bedroom even though it would be very helpful. I like having some empty space, so we have moved one of the cupboards in our workroom, which is not very intuitive!”

What are some objects in the house that are most important for Ekta?

“I will sound philosophical here, but that idea of ‘not letting go off things that mean a lot to me’ (it happens with clothes especially) is something I have changed now. Or at least I'm trying to change. At the end of the day, they're just things and I don't want to have that sort of attachment with them. So I have deliberately given up some stuff that was not needed anymore. I also realised that I have already lived almost half my life on this planet and if I just keep collecting, my life will be so cluttered, so I have to let go.”

That last line makes sense on so many levels.

“But of course, there are still things that I am attached to - my plants, for example. They mean a lot to me. Some of our furniture pieces too, because we have spent our hard-earned money on them.

One of the objects that I really treasure is this lamp we picked up from a trip to Morocco. That’s really special for me. I also really like having personal pictures around the house. They remind you of your journey and the warmth of your family. And I keep changing them often because I get bored easily. Framing pictures is something I've had a knack for since childhood in fact. When I was in first or second class, I used to cut out pictures of me and my parents and, you know, put them in those frames. And my mother used to scold me because I cut out such good pictures (laughs). Later though, I was officially appointed as the manager for our family albums.”

“Don't be scared of the whole process. It takes time, observation, and intuition to develop a ‘Green Thumb’.”

Since Ekta is a new mother, I wonder how she feels about creating a relationship between nature and her child from an early age. It’s something she thinks about a lot. There have been discussions about this within her family too, especially because she herself had a lot of experiences in nature while growing up.

She says, “Although I was brought up in a city, I spent a fair amount of time in my mother's village especially during the summer holidays. There was a pond, cattle running around, and of course, a lot of greenery. I have also worked in a forest for about 10 years. So all of these experiences have really informed my life, and now we are in enclosed spaces most of the time.

At least what I do for now is let my child be as free as possible - if he wants to roll around in the balcony (without plucking and eating the leaves), I just let him be. I think my balcony is going to be a space where he develops that connection with nature, and then family holidays will help too.”

For all the new plant parents out there (including me!) with hectic lives and space constraints, these are Ekta’s top three suggestions:

1. Get simple, easy plants - snake plant, for example.

2. Even if you end up killing a few plants in the beginning, it's completely okay. You have to try again because eventually, you will succeed. Don't be scared of the whole process. It takes time, observation, and intuition to develop a ‘Green Thumb’.

3. Don't over-care for your plants. Don't obsess about them. Give them the right amount of water (most people kill their plants by over-watering them) and light. And then just forget about them. They will grow beautifully.

Lastly, if at all somebody has been living under a rock and is not familiar with the amazing content Ekta has created over the years, here are the top three videos that Ekta personally recommends:

Grow Microgreens from Indian Kitchen: This is where I show how you can literally grow stuff from your kitchen, you don't even have to buy seeds!

My Mumbai 750 sq ft Home: This is a home tour video of our first home which had just 750 square feet carpet area. We did have a bunch of plants there. It shows that you can do a lot of green stuff in a small place, even without a balcony. This video is also special to me because it was kind of very raw, honest. I had just started making videos at this time, so I can see my professional growth over the years when I see this.

The influencer making gardening cool and trendy | BBC News India: I quite enjoyed doing this video for BBC. This is actually the first video I shot after coming back to work post my maternity break. It features me and my baby (smiles)!

Home Stories: With Garden Up’s Ekta Chaudhary