You enter a maze, quite like the one in a Harry Potter book. And then begins the exploration
Smart Eco Park, New Panvel (Outdoors)
You enter a maze, quite like the one in a Harry Potter book. And then begins the exploration. The Smart Eco Park (SEP) overwhelms you because every inch of this 20-acre ecologically biodiverse space has been landscaped with a great deal of thinking, reiterating the idea that nature is the future, and the only way we will grow as a race on Earth is to revive, recycle and reuse resources it has endowed us with.
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SEP is accessible to anyone who books in advance with a minimum of 30 people. My two kids, Vani (12) and Ammol (10), and I have been allowed entry because we are tagging along with a school group. On entering the maze (the point of the maze being to show kids that there are many ways to reach the same goal), we are split up into groups, each led by an Ecopark team leader. We learn about urban planning, sustainability, renewable energy, global citizenship and more. But first, we get a quick tractor tour of the park.
As we wait for the tractor, we are shown how the wall at the entrance is a vertical garden. This living wall is irrigated by greywater (the relatively clean waste water from baths, sinks, toilets, kitchens and other domestic uses) and uses drip bags that keep plants hydrated with minimum water and minimum wastage. Every term is explained and discussed in a child-friendly, interactive way. We head next to participate in a hands-on experiment on rainwater harvesting.
SEP was created in 2005 and it took six years to convert a barren land with a low water table to the lush space it is today. Every element - the tree house, prints of real leaves on the flanked cement path specially created for physically challenged kids, the fact that everything used in this property is made from recycled material but doesn't look it, the hands-on child-friendly experiments that make learning powerful, the 10,000-plus butterflies that abound in the space, the 29 varieties of trees and herbs to teach children about the items we rely on nature for, and a garden dedicated to vegetation that was used in prehistoric times to create colour - shows that it is a labour of love.
We explore the space with our guide, marvelling at the natural beauty, not minding the distance we have walked. We enter the Education Centre to participate in a televised talk show on global environmental issues. We guzzle bottles of delicious mint lemonade made from the lime and spearmint grown in-house, much like all the other organic, healthy food we are served. The gowshala, with its pure-bred Gir cows, is the cleanest we've seen. Finally, there's a place that today's bratty, well-travelled kids can go to and have a jaw-dropping experience, so close to Mumbai.
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