Green Thumb

(n.) An expression used to describe someone's affinity/skill at gardening or growing plants.

Dirty Thumb

(n.) An expression I propose to be used to denote the lack of Ghanian ability to garden

There should be a definition of Dirty Thumb too. Horticulture in a tropical country is a natural skill/art across many countries in the world. But sadly Ghana lacks in both sense and sensibilities of gardening and flowering. 

In my limited travels in Accra and in Ghana, there are really few places - hotels/offices/residences/resorts that have beautiful gardens. Sure some try, but the results are less than optimal - always. The best effort I have seen is at the Coconut Grove Resort in Capecoast. The resort must be employing dozens of gardeners to manage their lovely golf course and the vast greens. Full marks to the efforts but the best portions of the grass are not even (may be) like the under maintained portions of the Central Park, NY. To be fair, the American Embassy gardens, Golden Tulip Kumasi, Palm Beach Hotel, some complexes in Airport Area have very good landscaping, but that is so small a fraction compared to the overall 'landscaped' area and even minuscule compared to other tropical countries like Sri Lanka or Thailand or the Caribbeans. Everywhere you see in Ghana, the flowering pots are just pots and there is really only one color to be expected from landscapes - yellowish green. 

Culture & Skills: Gardens are a mindset. I dont have one. But lot of countries have that in their mindset to grow flowering pots, keep things green and colorful. Ghanaians in spite of spending lot of money on buildings and designer rock arrangements, wont get beautiful gardens because there is no environment that helps them inculcate the habit of making and maintaining gardening. A Horticulture exhibition in Accra had so few guests and even fewer companies participating, that it was sad. In Chatucak Market of Bangkok and many other flower markets (yes, there are really huge wholesale markets for Flowers in Asia) the sheer collection and colors of flowers will make a Ghanian stand and wonder for a long time. Asians use flowers everywhere - events, wedding, prayers, funerals, celebrations, personal decoration etc. And selling flowers is an important occupation for lot of small scale vendors.

Tools & Equipment: True the sun is hot. But not as hot in Nagpur, India or Abidjan, IVC. The tools, equipment that are used in gardening: from lawn mowers to simple digging tools are so damn expensive that the dependence is on the labour. Even to buy the Plants, it would take a good fortune just to get the bare minimum required for a 200m2 garden. The prices need to go down for more adoption of tools for gardening and the adoption needs to go up for the prices to go down as availability will increase with the demand. 

Flowers & Shopping: Another pain point is lack of production of flowers. There are really very few flower plants that are grown in Ghana and the imports from SouthAfrica and elsewhere make the flowers really expensive. So all the events in Ghana have elaborate cloth and ribbon (plastic) decorations and no flowers! As an Indian I cant imagine a wedding or a event without flowers. I wanted to buy some fresh flowers for my wife and I went to the Flower Shop in Tesano near the Santano Market. The shop it self didnt have one flower to show. But the boy there showed me a whole book of flower bouquet photographs each of them varying from 150$ to 500$. And the bouquets were barely having 20 flowers each. For 500$, we still get a truck load of marigold in India and a room full of orchids in Bangkok. I then scoured the market, calling all and sundry for finding a stockist where I can choose flowers and put together a bouquet. After a dozen or so calls, I get a strong reference to Burma Camp and I go all the way to find that this shop has very real looking plastic flowers imported from China. They had 2 storeys full of that cheap plastic leaves and flowers. I did manage to find a stockist near Total Station at the Convention Centre and she had a small cold storage room which had decent collection. But the prices she was quoting, the merchandise if sold at once will make her a millionaire. So I settled for 4 roses tied in a bunch with a tape and paid 10$ for them. My wife was disappointed after getting 73Roses on one of her previous birthdays (when I decided to buy flowers instead of a 'real' gift) but happy I found roses in Accra. The Rajouri Garden, New Delhi flower seller sold to me for 3Rs each (3.5$ in total). The economics is simple. 100Flowers are imported to Ghana by Air. Expensive customs duty, VAT and transport (Around 50% of the value of the goods). Then 50% or less is actually sold in time when the flowers are fresh and rest goto waste or into Funeral Wreaths (most of the wreaths are plastic and cloth, but some really expensive ones are of waste and bad flowers). So a consumer needs to pay more than 100% of the value of the goods. And the trouble of the entrepreneur to keep flowers in stock with poor power supply will make him charge another 100%. So at 300% the CFR value, which consumer will choose to encourage flower imports? 

I believe with proper nurturing of gardeners, a good investment will be in to Horticulture. Once the consumer likes what he buys and the price at which he buys, Ghana can be a flowering nation soon.