Swapna and Madhulika Liddle

Photographs by Prabhas Roy

Niyogi Books       

INR 1995

The book began with Prabhas Roy’s atmospheric photographs which put the idea of the narrative into the Liddle sisters’ minds. Delhi is a city of different gardens, Mughal and British followed by CPWED all of whom had different ideas on how gardens should be laid out – though from the beginning there was a love of shade trees and green cover for the communities that came up in and around Delhi over time, an example that the 21^st century might be wise to follow.

Going beyond just a listing of Delhi’s various gardens, it covers the history of the city and raises issues of colonisation and climate change. Swapna Liddle is a historian and Madhulika an amateur naturalist who writes novels set in old Dilli.  The two sisters combined their skills, the historian going through documents and journals to uncover the history of the gardens and the naturalist wandering through noting horticultural changes, numbering trees and the changes in the gardens during different seasons. Prabhas Roy hailing from Calcutta has been associated with numerous newspapers during his long career in Delhi.

The book meanders like a tourist guide taking the winding paths, following the streams, pointing out trees and flowers of note or architectural details. The words complement the photographs pointing out things that people might miss. From the guide emerges a treasure trove of discoveries like a mango tree in Lodi Gardens that is one of Delhi’s heritage trees and an old Buddha coconut, the tallest of its kind. The plaster pillars in Roshanara Bagh mimic cypresses with motifs of ashok trees on top. Aurangzeb chose to be crowned in Shalimar Bagh fearing trouble if he proclaimed himself in Shahjehanabad  and Qudsia Bagh with its 1857 undercurrents was where the British and Indian armies faced each other. Hayat Baksh Garden with its char bagh layout has more or less dried up and only a few scattered remains evoke the memory of what was once ShahJehan’s ‘life bestowing’ garden where gold and silver vases in marble niches held flowers by day and scented candles by night.

As far as the Muslim rulers were concerned paradise was a garden which was why many tombs were built surrounded by peaceful green with flowerbeds. Thereupon people wanted to be buried near the saints whose tombs were in many gardens so a whole range of tombs spread from Nizamuddin Dargah to Sunder Nursery to Humayun’s Tomb to the Lodi Gardens.

Not all the gardens are old and not all of them are gardens either. The popular Sunder Nursery for example expanded from what used to be Azim Bagh with its old monuments to become a planned repository of plants. The Garden of the Five Senses was planned by Delhi Tourism. What is clear is that different ages have their own ideas of gardens which is why the various differing notions of green cover that exist in Delhi today. The city has 18,000 parks and gardens a figure that seems staggering when one considers the reputation that Delhi has for air quality. However, the authors point out that the climate of the city is not conducive to green vegetation, this despite the fact that several residential colonies have the ‘bagh’ or garden suffix to their names—Shalimar Bagh, Punjabi Bagh, Jor Bagh, Moti Bagh, Karol Bagh, Dilshad Garden and Maharani Bagh. However, Punjabi Bagh, Dilshad Garden and Maharani Bagh have no historical evidence for their names though Jor Bagh was a garden before it became a colony.

The Liddles point out the trees in each garden that they write about, the changes over time – Mughul gardens were rich in fruit trees but that trend changed over time. Nowadays the trees to be found in the Delhi gardens barring a few are not the original planting. When the British took over and shifted capital to Delhi from Calcutta they made a list of 13 essential trees that had to be planted – they also introduced plants like the lantana that in many cases choked the original vegetation. Lutyens created the Mughul Gardens in New Delhi to Lady Hardinge’s instructions, basing them on the Mughal Gardens in Kashmir – the doob grass was brought from Calcutta to be planted on the lawns – and the name became Amrit Udyan in 2021. Gardens post-Independence again were different – there were experiments in planting sakura which did not work out or in transferring shrubs to Buddha Jayanti Park from Lodi Gardens with no understanding of the difference in terrain.

Change is of course a constant – people’s views of beauty differ over time and what is important is the greening of the city and creating a buffer against climate change. The Gardens of Delhi with its historical anecdotes, its list of old trees and new tree finds – the owl tree in Nehru Park for instance –  and the photographs that capture the essence of each green space is bound to appeal to all lovers of Dilli and lovers of gardens old or new.

(Anjana Basu is a Kolkata-based author and columnist.)