New Delhi, Jun 27 (PTI) A new book profiles Delhi’s popular gardens, their history, landscape and horticulture and also takes a long view of some of the problems and challenges of maintaining that green cover in the face of growing urban density.
“Gardens of Delhi” by sister duo Swapna and Madhulika Liddle with photographs by Prabhas Roy has been published by Niyogi Books.
The authors say they have tried to include a variety of gardens – from historic palace gardens to those that originally lay on the high road, some laid out by royal patrons, others as outcomes of commemoration or even litigation.
The book concentrates on spaces that are primarily gardens and the authors decided to restrict themselves to gardens that have an interesting story, historical or horticultural.
“… Humayun’s tomb garden, which is simply an adjunct to the monumental tomb, has not been included. We realise that in the process we have left out several gardens too, particularly the many big and small parks that lie within residential areas all through the city. Not only would it have been impossible to document all of these, but we realised that we were not compiling a directory,” they say.
The book covers major gardens, such as Lodi Garden, Hayat Baksh Bagh, Roshanara Bagh, Shalimar Bagh, Qudsia Bagh, Mehrauli Archaeological Park, Talkatora Garden, Mughal Garden (Amrit Udyan), Sunder Nursery, Buddha Jayanti Park, Nehru Park, National Rose Garden, The Garden of Five Senses, Indraprastha Park and the Green Spaces of Delhi.
The book is also replete with fascinating tidbits.
Did you know that Balban’s tomb in Mehrauli Archaeological Park has the earliest example of a true arch in Delhi? Or that Buddha Jayanti Park has a Bodhi tree, planted by the then prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri in 1964 as a sapling taken from the original Bodhi tree under which Buddha attained enlightenment? Or that the oldest tree in Nehru Park, an ailanthus, is called ‘Ullu ka ped’ (tree of owls), because many owls roost here? The authors say Delhi is often remarked on for a having an unusual amount of green cover for such a large urban agglomeration.
“This is, however, a relatively new phenomenon. Delhi’s climate is not naturally conducive to lush vegetation. With a fairly low annual rainfall, which is moreover concentrated in the monsoon months, the natural vegetation of Delhi is described as ‘semi-desert’, with relatively few, rather thorny, medium sized trees,” they say.
According to the Liddle sisters, they were told that in the last decade of the 13th century, emperor Jalaluddin Khalji laid out a garden between the river Yamuna and his fortified palace of Kilugarhi (located around present day Kilokri village).
“Nothing remains of either Kilugarhi or the garden planted in it. In fact, even the river has now changed course,” they say.
They also say that the oldest garden of which some remains can still be found in Delhi, dates from the 14th century, when Delhi was ruled by the Tughlaq dynasty.
“Though the original horticulture of the garden has disappeared without a trace, we are lucky to have some physical remains of a terraced garden -probably the only such Tughlaq-era garden in existence. It lies inside a modern DDA park called Vasant Udyan, in Vasant Vihar.
“We can see the remains of a raised stone water channel, stone masonry wells, and small tanks. These are all that remains of an irrigation system that would have irrigated the garden,” they write. PTI ZMN RB RB
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