The school’s gardening club and the first seed we planted
BRKM Reunion has brought former students of Baranagore Ramakrishna Mission Ashrama High School together across distances that would once have seemed unbridgeable. The site’s reunion notices, photographs and shared recollections have made school histories feel present again. Among them is the modest gardening club: a memory of students who worked a patch of ground, saved seeds and discovered that a growing plant could become a shared responsibility.
The first seed we planted was a mustard seed, according to the account passed among alumni. It was small enough to disappear between schoolchildren’s fingers, yet it gave our earliest club memory a clear beginning. Years later, former pupils in Australia can recognise the story in their own backyard plots, community gardens and pots, while keeping alive the school committee’s wider work for students who need educational support.
A small beginning beside the school grounds
The oldest version of the club story begins near the edge of the school grounds in Baranagore, West Bengal. The exact date has faded, but the sequence of memories remains. A few students had been helping with the garden and wanted a place of their own. They cleared a neglected bed, borrowed a spade and divided the work among themselves. School life offered lessons in reading, mathematics and discipline; the proposed club added lessons in patience, division and care for something outside an examination hall.
The mustard seed was not presented at a ceremony. One pupil brought it, another found a suitable spot, and the others watched the first watering. The story our alumni share says the soil was pressed down gently, the seed covered lightly and the spot marked so it would not be disturbed. Those details may have changed in the retelling, but they capture the care with which the students treated a beginning that belonged to all of them.
As the plant grew, the club gained a rhythm. Watering happened before lessons, weeds came out during breaks, and the bed was checked when the weather changed. A garden does not keep hours, so students learned to return without being prompted. They also discovered how many small jobs it demanded: carrying water, loosening compacted soil, identifying weeds and securing young stems against the wind. This practical side of the memory matters. The gardening club was less an ornamental hobby than a lesson in keeping a promise to plants, classmates and the school grounds.
Lessons that travelled to Australian gardens
For alumni settled in Australia, the story changes shape without losing its meaning. In Sydney suburbs such as Marrickville, shared garden beds and volunteer-run plots offer a familiar setting. Melbourne householders speak of a backyard “veggie patch”, while apartment dwellers use tubs on a balcony or a sunny strip beside a car park. These are different versions of the school plot, but each asks the same basic question: what can a small group care for together?
The climate demands adjustments. Melbourne’s reputation for “four seasons in one day” is exaggerated, yet a warm afternoon can still be followed by a frosty morning. Inland Australia can reach 40 degrees Celsius, and council watering restrictions may interrupt a regular routine. A seedling that thrives in Bengal’s humid conditions may need afternoon shade in Adelaide or different timing in tropical Queensland. Australian alumni have therefore turned the first seed into a lesson in observing local conditions rather than copying an old timetable.
The market has shaped those adaptations too. Bunnings and Mitre 10 stock familiar packets of vegetable and herb seeds, while independent nurseries offer seedlings suited to particular districts. Australian gardeners often buy grafted fruit trees rather than start every variety from seed, so our mustard would now be joined by herbs such as rosemary, thyme or lettuce. Many households also keep a council “green bin” for garden waste and turn it into compost, another quiet form of the resourcefulness our students first learned at school.
Keeping a record that belongs to the alumni
The BRKM Reunion website gives former students somewhere to register for reunions, find notices of gatherings and share memories. That makes it a fitting home for the gardening club story, provided the memories are recorded with care. Dates, photographs, the names of plants and the names of pupils can all help. So can the smaller details: whether the seedling survived a storm, who fetched water and what the first harvest looked like.
A club record should do more than turn nostalgia into a neat summary. Useful club instructions should be practical rather than grand. A broader collection of everyday practical guidance can be one reference, but the most trusted records will always be the dates, weather notes and photographs kept by our own members. The aim is to preserve ordinary actions clearly enough for another generation to understand what happened.
Sharing these accounts also lets alumni correct the gaps in collective memory. Someone may remember the mustard seed; someone else may recall a different first crop or a later bed beside the school’s boundary wall. These variations need not be forced into one polished legend. Each person can add a detail to the shared record, then connect it to reunion activities, a display of class photographs or a conversation at the refreshment table. The value lies in what can be verified and what former students are prepared to share.
A school project with a wider purpose
The club’s history sits naturally beside the committee’s present support for disadvantaged and meritorious students. Educational materials, a study centre, medical camps, competitions and donations have all required planning and care. A gardening project can support that work without pretending to replace it. Raising seedlings, sharing advice or contributing a small, clearly accounted sum from a produce sale can provide a practical example of student initiative directed towards a shared need.
For any activity connected with BRKM Reunion, the same rule should apply as for the school garden: identify what is needed, assign the work honestly and account for the resources used. An online casino bonus notice does not belong in the reunion bulletin. Communications should serve former students and the wider school community, rather than borrow attention from commercial promotions.
Clear boundaries also protect the goodwill of the community. Donations for books and study-centre supplies should be receipted and publicly described, and volunteers should never feel obliged to give beyond their means. Support for pupils should not depend on an adult’s personal spending or on uncertain schemes of chance. A school vegetable plot can be useful, but education remains the priority. The strongest legacy is a habit of disciplined care: the gardening club becomes part of the committee’s service because it teaches people to organise, contribute and follow through.
Ways to carry the gardening legacy forward
Alumni can keep the memory practical by combining the archive with a modest programme of work. A useful programme connects school history with the alumni community and support for students, whether the activity takes place in Baranagore, in an Australian suburb or online.
- Preserve a reliable page on BRKM Reunion with dates, photographs, first-hand recollections and a short explanation of the mustard seed’s origin.
- Collect memories of other seeds and crops, including local varieties, planting seasons and unsuccessful attempts, so the record stays accurate.
- Run an alumni seed exchange, labelling parcels with climate notes for Australian regions and advice for anyone starting with containers.
- Hold gardening sessions around reunions, with shared tools, water, gloves and tasks suitable for people with different levels of mobility.
- Devote a modest share of plant-sale income to educational materials or the study centre, recording the amount raised and how it was spent.
- Connect the club with student competitions and the committee’s medical-camp and donation work by sharing practical skills and documenting each contribution.
The mustard seed began with students who had time to watch it sprout and a reason to keep returning. Their small patch taught them that care becomes stronger when it is shared. That lesson remains with alumni tending Australian gardens and with every reunion record that gives former students a place in the school’s continuing story.