Know Your City: how HC Javaraya, who shaped Bengaluru’s green soul, became first Indian to take charge of Lalbagh

One of his grandsons, H C Padmanabha, notes that while he had been too young to personally remember Javaraya, according to the memories of the family, he was “quite a strict and disciplined person who stood no nonsense either at home or in official matters.”

Pioneer of fruit cultivation, experimentation

This discipline would go on to serve him well, as Javaraya also served from 1914 to 1918 as mokhtesar to the Maharaja of Mysore, overseeing the various gardens in the city. At the time, he would have overseen the Madhuvana garden (not to be confused with the current Madhuvana, where several members of the royal family’s last rites were held). The garden would have supplied flowers for pujas at the palace, fruits and vegetables for consumption, and even alfalfa grass for the royal horses. He was also a pioneer of fruit cultivation and experimentation at the time, something that would remain a constant in his career.

Around this time, the foremost gardener of Bengaluru, and possibly Mysore state, was the German botanist G H Krumbiegel, whose legacy can still be seen in the pattern of tree planting throughout Bengaluru. Towards the end of World War I and around the time Javaraya returned from his palace posting, Krumbiegel needed an able hand at the tiller in Lalbagh as he himself had been interned as a citizen of an “enemy” nation. The hand was that of Javaraya’s, who took up the posting of assistant superintendent.

Towards the end of World War I and around the time H C Javaraya returned from his palace posting, G H Krumbiegel needed an able hand in Lalbagh and Javaraya took up the posting of assistant superintendent. (Wikimedia Commons)

During this stint, Javaraya would go on to study at the Kew Gardens, among the most extensive botanical gardens in the world, becoming one in a chain of Kew-trained superintendents of Lalbagh. When Krumbiegel retired in 1932, Javaraya took over as the superintendent.

Peltophorum trees, Horticultural Institute among legacies

Some of the noteworthy physical additions to Lalbagh from Javaraya’s time have unfortunately not survived to the current day (at least in their past form), such as a fountain in the centre of the Glass House, and an artificial waterfall connecting the Lalbagh Tank and lotus pond. On the other hand, one can still see the fourth wing of the Lalbagh Glass House even today, with its frame created in the ironworks at Bhadravati (the previous wings had their frame components made in Britain).

One may also note the elegant guardhouse at the West Gate of Lalbagh. Back in 1935, the government had acquired part of the residence of Dewan P N Krishnamurti, with the result that a guardhouse at the building was to be razed. On the intervention of Javaraya, it was instead completely dismantled and perfectly rebuilt in Lalbagh.

Other additions were more subtle. Even today, if one sees older Peltophorum trees around the city, it is likely that Javaraya had a hand in their planting, as his contemporary Dewan Sir Mirza Ismail loved their bright yellow blooms. He also made extensive contributions to modern horticulture – the Fruit Research Station that he established at Hesaraghatta would go on to become one of the foundations of the modern Indian Institute of Horticultural Research.

Padmanabha appropriately describes his grandfather as having been primarily a “fruit man”. His time at Lalbagh included the popularisation of the Rome Beauty varietal of apple, while his extensive research on apple cultivation is still cited in modern research papers on the subject and indeed still applied in cultivation in Switzerland.