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The Gardens of Delhi | Delhi is rarely thought of as a city of great natural beauty. It is a city of immigrants, change and not at all associated with quiet and green space. Unless you know where to look. 

Actually this and all the previous cities of Delhi have had extraordinary links with gardens and relationships with nature endure in some of the most surprising places. I see gardens not just in the manicured lawns of Rashtrapati Bhawan but also in the slums of the poor, in the garlands at the shrines of the gods and in the flowers in women's hair. 

These gardens are a pause in the city allowing a dialogue between what Delhi was, what it is and its ever changing people. Every migrant that comes shoe-less to Nizamuddin station from Bihar to build the new 'Shining India' brings with him the memory of the quiet of the fields of his village. His garland offering at a shrine is his planted garden in affluent South Delhi and those memories build what Delhi is becoming as a city. 

The classic Hindu texts have passages that describe and recommend gardens and their layout. Islam has always had a fascination with the garden and Delhi, always a Muslim city at heart, has many fine examples of Mughal gardens. New Delhi, an imperial British creation, had at its inception wide open boulevards surrounded by gardens and canals paying homage to colonial control by dominating the public space. All now thoroughly Indian-ised, chaotic but still functional. 

Plants and trees are cultivated in the most bizarre places: at the edge of motorways and between illegally built structures, people tend to gardens of all descriptions. Even in the grimmest colony, it is not unusual for people to grow flowers or medicinal plants. 

The New Delhi Municipal Council maintains 1107 acres of greenery. In a conservative city that has little privacy, parks are quiet corners where lovers can meet.

Public spaces. Private lives.

A bench in the early morning light in Nehru Park
A yoga class in Lodi Gardens in front of the Bara Gumbad Tomb
A man washes clothes in a canal on Rajpath at dawn. Designed by Sir Edward Lutyens, the wide boulevards surrounded by parklan...
A man greets a flower buyer at the Flower Market, Baba Kharak Singh Margh
Worshippers (both Hindu and Muslim) pray and make offerings over the tomb of Hazrat Nizamuddin Awlia, a sufi saint who died i...
A gardener fills a bird table with seed in the Mughal Gardens at Rashtrapati Bhawan
A couple hold hands in the park at India Gate. Public displays of affection are rare in a conservative city like Delhi. The p...
Boys play cricket in the park at India Gate
A man asleep beneath a pot plant hung from a wall
A typical Mughal depiction of a garden on a stone pillar outside an old Haveli
A garden of daisies growing beside a road
Syed Yahya Bukhari, President of the Jama Masjid Mosque relaxes on his lawn in his secluded garden
Radhika and her neighbour Saroj on her roof garden in one of Delhi's largest slum's Kesumpur Pahari. The slum, built more tha...
Boys play cricket on a gardened Traffic Island
Flowers on the grave of Isa Khan in Humayun's Tomb
Flower pots and petals in the Garden of the Five Senses
A stage set for a wedding with chairs and garlands
Workers prepare the stage for a wedding and a florist creates a floral decoration on a canopy above which the bride and groom...
A couple in the Garden of the Five Senses
A woman's floral sari and a concrete wall, Palika Bazaar
Kishori Lal, a tailor and his family under an Ashoka tree in New Friends Colony, New Delhi. "I came from Rajasthan 22 yeas ag...
Men talking on a wall in a park overlooking Palika Bazaar
A guard at the Delhi Flower show, The Garden of the Five Senses
Bela Gupta, Secretary of the All India Kitchen Garden Association and her dog in her roof garden.
Women gossiping amongst flowers in the garden at a society party at a smart address in New Delhi