Ahmedabad greening

The motivation to "create an oxygen hub and botanical garden” in memory of his late wife Yasmin led industrialist and philanthropist Firdos Cambatta to endow The Doongerwadi Botanical Garden in Ahmedabad. The Garden, inaugurated on November 4, 2018, consists of three pools and over 20,000 trees.
"There are very few places in the city that can serve as green lungs...deforestation is affecting us all...one needs to cultivate a love for nature,” Cambatta told Parsiana on December 13. "I haven’t done much, only planted a few trees,” he said about the Doongerwadi project. The Serenity Library and Botanical Garden in the Gujarat capital set up by the industrialist is home to 800 species of exotic and indigenous trees, 100 species of birds and many species of butterflies. The 3,000-book library has over 350 documentary films on conservation and a 40-seater reading room.

A plaque commemorates the event with a quote ascribed to poet and thinker Rabindranath Tagore: "Trees are earth’s endless efforts to speak to the listening heavens.” Lauding Cambatta’s philanthropy, a note from the Ahmedabad Parsi Panchayat (APP) states that Firdos told APP president Brig Jahangir Anklesaria (Retd) that "it is...better to give with warm hands.” With the Garden, APP hopes to "draw the birds back to facilitate the process of dakhmenashini,” according to their note. The Garden spans approximately 20 acres of the "approximately 50-acre property” of the Tower of Silence, APP managing committee member Ariz Bokdawala told Parsiana on December 5.
A two-mobed jashan led by Ervad Vistasp Dastoor and supported by Ervad Vazaan Dastoor followed the unveiling. Ervad (Dr) Parvez Bajan, panthaky of Bombay’s Bomanji Merwanji Mewawala Agiary spoke on the relevance of nature to humanity and Zoroastrianism. The 250 community members who had assembled partook of a gahanbar in memory of Roda and Savaksha Mahudawala.