Rooftop Gardening in Chattogram City Areas of Bangladesh- An Empirical Study

Abstract

The study was carried out in three selected metro areas of Chattogram city of Bangladesh covering 90 sample households. Proportionate random sampling technique was followed. Results revealed that the average rooftop space per household was recorded as 2248.23 sq. feet; whereas 1268.4 sq. feet (56.42%) was under rooftop garden (RTG), 588.5 sq. feet (26.17%) was remained as open and 391.3 sq. feet (17.41%) was identified as potential space for expanding the garden. All of the gardens were installed at 2-10^th stories of the buildings. As crop diversity 26 types of vegetables, 39 types of fruits, 11 types spices and 22 types of flower/ornamental and medicinal plants were found to be grown in the current RTG’s. But the number of crops varies significantly among the garden and locations. About 16 types of containers were used for growing plants. The total yield was recorded to be 135.38 kg per garden from 22 types of vegetables in the year of 2019. Among them, the highest yield was received from bottle gourd, 17.98 kg followed by tomato, 9.33 kg and country bean, 8.99 kg. In the case of fruits, the total yield was recorded as 77.24 kg per garden from 18 types of fruits in the same year. Among these, mango gave the highest yield (8.57 kg), followed by papaya (8.38 kg) and guava (7.52 kg). Research should be carried out on crop selection, fertilizer and irrigation management under different container systems and to develop a suitable RTG model for greening city of Bangladesh.