Article Credit: www.hinduonnet.com/folio/fo0006/00060400.htm
From a special Sunday magazine isuue on "Enchanted
Gardens"
Travels of the
Heart:
BANGALORE
- Cubbon Park & Lal Bagh
by
Susheela Nair
Blessed with salubrious climate, fertile soil
and copious rainfall, Bangalore has a rich heritage of spacious
gardens, parks, tree-lined avenues and a multitude of flowering
trees interspersed with canopy trees. One can see spectacular
flowers in bloom throughout the year and each season is resplendent
with a variety of flowers, multi-hued and fragrant, weaving patterns
with lush foliage. This green legacy has earned for Bangalore
the sobriquet "garden
city."
The garden city also enjoys a year-long programmed show of sequentially
blossoming trees (or Ritusamhara). It starts with the vivid splashes
of the trumpet shaped jacarandas and the butter yellow blooms of the tabebuias in
January/ February. In summer, Bangalore is ablaze with the vibrant red
flowers of gulmohar and the pink cassias,
which provide a welcome relief in the sweltering heat. Then follow the peltophorum with
spikes of yellow flowers above its dense green foliage. Its copper coloured
pods are equally elegant. Monsoon brings a glorious profusion of the
blossoms of the yellow cassias, cassia siamea and cassia spectabilis.
In October, Bangaloreans have a visual treat of the spathodias with
their bell-shaped flowers. Besides these, one can observe myriads of
flowering trees like the bottlebrush, the frangipani,
the cannon ball, sampinge, pride
of India, the bombax special and many more non-flowering
trees.
The genesis of Bangalore's garden tradition can be traced back
to our erstwhile Indian rulers like Hyder Ali, Tippu and
British Bangalore's successive rulers - colonial and post independence
jealously guarded the green heritage and even contributed their
own share to the city's aesthetics and preserved the "greenness".
Bangalore has two spectacular parks - Lalbagh and Cubbon, several
locality parks, innumerable bungalow gardens, boulevards and flowering
traffic islands. It is this green lung that makes the city so special,
providing breathing space for health freaks, nature enthusiasts,
walkers and joggers.
Throughout history, people and gardens are closely linked and
Lalbagh is a classic example of this. Started as a 40 - acre mango
garden, Lalbagh became Hyder Ali's Royal Retreat. Later it was
developed and enriched by his son Tippu, who initiated the trend
of sending out plant-collecting delegations to many far-flung destinations
and nurturing species. During the British era, Lalbagh prospered.
Thanks to the unfailing efforts of dedicated British officials,
Lalbagh witnessed an increase in acreage and plant species. Exotic
plant species were exchanged between the Kew Garden of England
and Lalbagh. Now sprawling over an area of 240 acres, Lalbagh is
a garden par excellence with its exotic species of flora, shrubs
and trees.
Krumbiegal, a German born botanist, deserves
special mention for laying the foundation of the garden city and
all the significant parks and gardens in the then princely state
of Mysore. While conceiving and planning the city's gardens, Krumbiegal
and his disciples Dr. H. Marigowda and Javaraya made
flowering trees an internal part of the city's aesthetics
Sir Mirza Ismail, the then Dewan completed the illustrious work
initiated by Krumbiegal. He planted peltophorum in many roads and
an avenue with champaks in Malleshwaram and called it Sampige Road.
Among the Indian doyens of horticulture who made Bangalore beautiful,
the name of Dr. H. Marigowda who headed the State Horticulture Department
stands out. His pioneering efforts in setting up horticultural farms
in every nook and corner of Karnataka and outstanding work on urban
horticulture and landscaping, avenue tree culture, and aboriculture
in making Bangalore a garden city is always remembered. Lakman
Rao, ex-commissioner of Bangalore City Corporation is another
Indian stalwart who took keen interest in laying out gardens and
parks in the corporation area and also planting flowering and shade
trees to beautify Bangalore. In this context, one has to pay a special
tribute to Neginhaul, who spearheaded a tree-planting
campaign in Bangalore during his tenure as Deputy Conservator of
Forests.
Cubbon Park, the other lung of Bangalore, is a great boon to Bangaloreans
who take a stroll under the tree canopies and beautiful tree avenues. Its vast
stretches of green form an elegant backdrop for the public buildings like Attara
Kacheri, the Seshadiri Iyer Memorial Library and
the stately Vidhana Soudha. While rambling through the park,
one can observe many exotic and indigenous flowering trees and the avians.
Known after Sir Mark Cubbon, the celebrated Chief Commissioner
of Mysore, the park was initially known as "Meades Park" after John
Meade, the then acting commissioner of Mysore. Subsequently it was
rechristened as Chamarajendra Park in 1927. With a view to
controlling the air and noise pollution level the Horticultural Department
is contemplating the regulation of movement of traffic in the Cubbon Park.
Sprawling over 240 acres, Cubbon Park includes the gardens of the Vidhana
Soudha, Raj Bhavan and LRDE Musical fountain,
the upkeep of which comes under the horticulture department. The Raj Bhavan
gardens with its well manicured lawns, rows of royal palms, rose gardens, gravelled
pathways, cisterns, pergolas and rare species of cookpine trees has a history
dating back to one and half centuries. The present Raj Bhavan garden is what
is left of a sprawling imperial garden known as "Residency Park".
Earlier the garden was called the Commissioner's bungalow gardens.
The 19th Century Bangalore was a period of spacious bungalows with vast stretches
of gardens and lawns, which evolved a culture of "Garden Parties". "It
was Winston Churchill who first made an attribute to Bangalore
as the garden city in his My Early Years" says Korah Chandy,
the then Secretary and Municipal Commissioner of Bangalore Civil Station. According
to Laeeq Futehally, "the real reason for Bangalore earning
its reputation of garden city was not so much its formal garden as the number
of trees on both public and private land. With its low bungalows set in large
grounds and overhung by trees and with its tree - lined roads, an aerial view
of the city would have been one of tree canopies with very little building
or road showing through."
Even the Bangalore City Corporation and Bangalore Development Authority chipped
in over the years to provide patches of green on the city's landscape. At present
several locality parks, mini forests, boulevards, horticultural nurseries are
maintained by them. "At BDA, we have launched an innovative project called
Integrated Urban Environment Improvement Project (IUEIP) to develop environment
management plans for four BDA layouts and some neighbouring areas" says Patalappa,
Senior director, Horticulture, BDA.
But the scene is quite different at BCC. The existing parks and gardens
need to be spruced up. A survey conducted by the Centre for Science
and Technology Urban Research Centre reveals that there are 262 locality
parks for a population of 65 lakhs, which means there is only one park for
every 52,000. "80 per cent of the corporation parks don't qualify to be
parks as they have become more like playgrounds" says Narendra
K. V. of the Research Centre. "It is pathetic that the number
of tree species in parks is only 16 and encroachments have gnawed into 9 per
cent of the parks," laments Narendra.
The cutting down of trees for widening of roads and construction of fly-overs,
dwindling of water table and tanks and shrinking of park spaces due to encroachment
have all contributed to the receding greenery in Bangalore. Though many trees
have been axed, many have been replaced by new ones. The saving grace is that
many private institutions, public undertakings, five-star hotels, resorts,
corporate offices have infused urban greenery as a part of their structures
by providing well-manicured gardens and elegant landscape grounds. They also
maintain some of the traffic islands. Amidst the allegations and counter allegations,
Bangaloreans can proudly proclaim that theirs is the only metropolis in India
to have more than one tree per person.
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