Established in 1965 by M S Randhawa and others, the Kitchen Garden Society is one of the oldest green gardens in the city. As you roll down its gates, lines of happily potted plants of all sorts greet you. A rare sight, you’ll find plenty of bees buzzing, butterflies fluttering and birds endlessly chirping here.

“Ours is a one-of-its-kind society which does business on a no-profit, no-loss basis,” says its chairman Surinder Sharma. As manager R P Gupta and two of the oldest gardeners-cum-supervisors, Mata Prasad and Sher Singh, take us on a tour of the place, they talk about the countless varieties of flora brought in from Saharanpur, Ludhiana, Patiala, Kolkata and the National Seeds Corporation among others.

“We supply seeds, saplings, ornamental fruits and trees,” they add. But the special part of this society is that it carries out special spray parties to its members’ gardens. “You’ll find all kinds of pesticides and fungicides here, and that too in small packs,” says Gupta, adding that they have about 1,600 members now.

“In fact, the membership is open these days,” says Sharma.