Establishment of various herbal gardens for the people of varied localities to utilize medicinal plants resources for a better health and environment

Medicinal plants have been an integral part of Indian health system. The growing demand of medicinal plants are leading to interest in Ayurveda, Unani, Siddha and other forms of natural remedies especially for cure and management of several diseases. Some of the medicinal plants are very popular and religiously important ones like Tulsi, Neem, Bel etc. have also been cultivated in rural homesteads to meet their immediate needs, even as home remedy. Establishment of herbal gardens, school herbal garden and home herbal garden is a collective approach which will create awareness and enhances knowledge of medicinal plants among the stakeholders and public sector. In India, NMPB is launched a project, in which a number of medicinal gardens have been established with a large number of valuable medicinal plants. In the present paper, the efforts made by the Herbal Research and Development Institute (HRDI) Gopeshwar, Uttarakhand, India to consider and classify a variety of herbal remedies suitable for a particular area and local habitats. We discuss here the establishment of thematic Herbal Gardens that would help in conservation of medicinal plants at the local community level in India.