If one quails at the thought of Delhi’s months of winter pollution, Gardens of Delhi serves as a timely reminder of the many historic green spaces available as reprieve for tired lungs. It could not have been easy for the authors to decide on what to include—or what to leave out. Hence, they decided ‘to restrict ourselves to gardens that have an interesting story, historical or horticultural’ (p. 23). Some are palace gardens, others are commemorative spaces, some interwoven into the city’s many lives while a few more contemporary ones are also described.
The Liddles start by taking us to the well-loved and extremely popular Lodi Gardens where rulers of the eponymous dynasty are buried. Covering 90 acres, the gardens not only house some beautiful tombs and mosques but also well over a hundred tree species, ranging from exotics such as the silver oak, Caribbean trumpet tree and the African sausage tree, and indigenes like the neem, mango, maulsari, and so on. The Mughals introduced the Charbagh design based on a four-fold grid where terraces or garden areas are separated by pathways and water channels. The Hayat Baksh Bagh at the Red Fort is one such garden—though of course, it is very different from what it must have been like in earlier centuries. The early gardens played an important role in providing shade and a pleasing ambience to living spaces, and manicured lawns and flower beds are legacies of a much later time. Fruit trees planted close together were harvested to provide funds for maintenance of many extensive gardens.