I worked at TERI — The Energy and Resources Institute — in Goa for eight years before starting this. I loved the work, but as anyone in a corporate sustainability role will tell you, there's a weird disconnect between writing policy about the environment and actually, you know, putting your hands in the dirt.

So in 2008, I quit. I started composting our kitchen waste. I tried to grow vegetables. Most of them died. Some didn't. It was brilliant.

In 2009, I opened a tiny store in Goa. The idea was to stock the kind of eco-friendly household things I was always hunting for — and failing to find. Seeds that hadn't been chemically treated. Compost that didn't come in a plastic sack. Pest repellents that didn't require a hazmat suit.

Then in 2011, the International Centre in Dona Paula invited me to do a workshop on kitchen gardening. I expected six people and some folding chairs. The room filled up. That was the first of what has turned into, somehow, more than 5,000 workshop participants over the years.

My husband Karan joined along the way — he handles the marketing side and the thousand little things that keep a small business running. But the teaching and the garden-design work is mostly me, still, after fifteen years.

"I worked at TERI for eight years and as is with any corporate job, soon realised that my direct impact with the environment was minimal."
— Yogita

Fifteen years of mostly figuring it out

Fifteen years of doing this has taught us some specific things, most of them learned by trying something that didn't quite work, then trying again. The test bed is our own 60 sq m kitchen garden attached to the store in Socorro — both our teaching space and where we find out what actually grows here.

What we know well:

• The three Konkan seasons — monsoon, winter, summer — and which vegetables suit each. They're not the same seasons as the "north India" gardening blogs tell you.
• Small-space growing in urban flats — balcony-sized, window-sill-sized, corner-of-the-living-room-sized. Mumbai and Bengaluru balconies, especially.
• Organic inputs — which compost works, which pest spray smells like a dream vs. a war crime, which fertilisers are worth the price.
• The first-four-weeks problem — where most new kitchen gardens die, and how to get people past it.

The other rooms we've been in

We've taught at the International Centre Goa and the Botanical Society of Goa. We're regulars at the Konkan Fruit Festival in Margao. Every August we set up a stall at the SFX School Siolim's Festival of Plants and Flowers, which has been going for 30+ years and is one of the great Goan gardening events.

For corporate sustainability sessions and school environment programs, we travel across India — more on that over in workshops.