The New Gardens of Delight

Says Nikhil Dhar of Artemisia, a Delhi-based architecture firm:“Land-scape architecture is a big craze and there is an unprecedented awareness about it among people. The best thing is that it is now being seen as an essential part of pro-jects of all scales.” Agrees Rohit Marol of Bangalore’s Terra Firma, a firm that does land-scape projects in about seven to eight cities of south India. “Be it Indore or Kochi, there has been a 20-25 percent increase in demand and awareness for landscape architecture over the past five to six years.”

While this surge in demand is gen-eral, architects say the popularity of landscape for residential properties— be it individual or group housing soci-eties— is noteworthy. “It is no more confined to huge areas and properties. Landscape architecture can be done, and has been done, even on a 300- square-yard residential plot.”

Rachna Kochar, a Delhi-based ex-porter of costume jewellery, offers a case in point. She got landscaping doneonher400-square-yardgardenin VasantVihar. “Earlier, wewereliving on thesecondfloor. Eventhen,I hadlots of potted plants. But later, when we movedto thegroundfloor, I decidedto get landscapingdone. Spaceis nocon- straint. Only, it’s better togofor simple styles if youdon’t haveahugearea.” Space, however, does become a constraint in a city like Mumbai.

Says Ashish Janardan Patankar of Madav Constructions: “The cost of land is so high here and space so rare that landscape architecture is the last priority for Mumbaikars. This city cannot be compared with the rest of the country in terms of realty. Even then, landscape architecture is growing in popularity and most of the projects we receive are for resi-dences and resorts.”

But why this sudden love for land-scape architecture? “Globalisation has been a boon,” says Sachin Jain, part-ner of Delhi-based architectural firm SJA Consultants.

Bangalore’s Marol, however, be-lieves the reason could be much more than just globalisation. “Landscape ar-chitecture has become more popular in cities because of increasing visibil-ity. People are more concerned about the image they project.”

Point taken. Says Kumud Jain, a homemaker in Delhi: “We have been living in our house since 1993, but it was only two months ago that we got landscaping done. All this whilewehad had artificial grass in our 500-square-yardgarden. Butwhenwesawprojects byaparticular architect, wedecidedto go for it.”Thecraze, says Jain, is conta-gious. “So many people have got it doneafter seeingour garden.”

Trendy it is, but is any particular trend the rage now? It depends, say ar-chitects.

For instance, in space-starved Mumbai, people have highly utilitarian and functional attitude to-wards landscapes. Says Dhar: “The minimalist look is popular. The old style—with ornate mouldings and fussy details—is still preferred. But the new style, with emphasis on space, clean lines, light and the sensitive use of materials, is also being followed.”

Land scape architects are happy that their job is not being seen as“horticul-ture” anymore. “There is an increasing realisation that landscape is not just about horticulture but everything about a particular space,” says Marol. “Earlier, people would just not under-stand that plants are only about five percentofalandscape,”adds Sachin.

Though there is more than horti-culture to a landscape, the craze for exotic plants, which, according to ar-chitects is not an advisable trend, is too strong to be ignored.

“To begin with, these plants are not natural to our environment, and are high on maintenance cost. Exotic plants are best for resorts where they get proper care and funds for mainte-nance,” says Janardan.

Irrespective of these whims and fancies, the future of landscape archi-tecture in India is bright. “Until re-cently, landscape architects in the country were limited to making cos-metic improvements to projects. Our acceptance as an integral part of the initial design process had been very restricted. But that is changing now,” says Dhar.

So if you have a little patch of green that needs “filling up”, don’t wait. Re-member size doesn’t matter, at least for landscape architects.