Home Gardens in Nepal

ƒ Home garden resource and knowledge management – knowledge documentation,

and promotion of community resource home garden and community seed bank

ƒ Balancing/promoting multiple components of home gardens.

ƒ Promoting multi-stakeholder partnership for home garden development initiatives.

ƒ Training and orientation to professional and field technicians in approaches to

diversity-oriented integrated home gardens.

ƒ Explore possible use of complementary approaches/ methods – farmers’ field school

(FFS), home garden for eco-tourism and so on.

ƒ Changing development focus, emphasizing utilization of available local bio-resources

in the home gardens rather than indiscriminate introduction of exotic species and

displacing local biodiversity.

Resource and information management focus and approach
The following measures have been suggested to address issues of resource and information
related to home gardens:
ƒ Maintenance of database of farmers’ knowledge and practices on home garden
management.
ƒ Listing of home garden species and associated local knowledge and practices.
ƒ Maintenance of in-situ and ex-situ seed/ gene bank.
ƒ Modeling training programmes with emphasis on enhancing home garden biodiversity
for livelihoods – improved nutrition and family income.
ƒ Integrating the concept home garden biodiversity and livelihoods in schools and
academic institutions.

Conclusion

Home gardens in Nepal have not received adequate attention and priority in research and
development programmes. The project has been successful in establishing the contribution
and value of home gardens to the food security, income and livelihoods of the people and
conservation of plant genetic resources on-farm. It has also been recognized that there is
huge scope and need for policy and programme interventions for further promotion of the
home gardens in Nepal. However, there is numerous challenges to translate this potential to
reality. Special attention and investment is required for the promotion of home gardens as it
provides excellent opportunities to reach millions of poor farmers and contribute in achieving
targets of millennium development goals.

Acknowledgement

We are thankful to the workshop participants, including men and women farmers of the
project sites and project staff for providing their valuable contribution to the discussion
included in the paper. The financial assistance from SDC, Nepal is also gratefully
acknowledged.