PLANT SPECIES DIVERSITY OF ROOF TOP GARDEN IN DHAKA CITY

Abstract

Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh has experienced a higher rate of urban growth in recent decades and emerged as the world’s fastest growing mega city. So, the city is facing incredible problems associated with the loss of plant diversity and a threat for our urban agriculture and environment with long term humanity problem but plant species diversity is a resource, property and the characteristic of plant kingdom. We depend on it for our security and health. So to improve the quality of healthy living and to create better opportunities for social and environmental benefits; rooftop gardening will be the solution and natural habitats to conserve some diversity in Dhaka city. With an overview of roof top gardening concept in the global context, the study was conducted within the DAE projected 4 metropolitan area of Dhaka city with the main aim to assess plant species diversity of rooftop garden in Dhaka city with inter species diversity of different plant groups and the prevalence of different plant species and to explore the relation between the plant species diversity and the selected characteristics of garden owners. Both primary and secondary data were collected with reconnaissance survey, direct observation, key informant interview, questionnaire survey and group discussions. The collected data were analyzed by using SPSS and MS Excel. The result revealed that the roof top garden of Dhaka city posses high plant species diversity where Shannon-Weaver diversity index were 3.84. Among species richness, 35 species were fruit and 10 species were medicinal which encompasses 84 families. Mango, beli, brinjal, patabahar and pudina were found most prevalent in their respective category. Inter species diversity was the highest (0.799) in the vegetable species and lowest in medicinal species (0.795). Sixty five percent of the garden owners have higher plant species diversity and 62.5 percent gardeners were interested in rising of roof top garden because they think that gardening products consumption are healthy. Roof top garden showed the direct relationship of plant species diversity with the selected characteristics of the garden owners where age, education, family size, management for gardening had no significant relationship with the plant species diversity. The remaining six selected characteristics such as area of gardening, spending time for gardening, training for gardening, input availability for gardening, problem faced for gardening and income of the garden owners had positive significant relationship with the plant species diversity. Garden owners faced pest attack problems during gardening practices which destroyed the products severely. Manpower seems to be a problem in some houses to look after the garden; in that cases paid services should be provided to continue the gardening activities. Adequate training, motivation and sustainable management are required to encourage the city people in practicing roof top garden to improve plant species diversity elsewhere in Bangladesh based on residential and rental houses.