NEW DELHI: A once-forgotten Mughal garden in the heart of New Delhi will be reopened on Wednesday after years of painstaking conservation work.
The 36-hectare garden will be formally opened by the Aga Khan, whose Trust for Culture has helped recreate the classical garden and restore its crumbling 16th-century monuments.
Some of the ancient tombs it contains were close to ruin before conservation efforts began around a decade ago, but have now been given UNESCO World Heritage status.
The park is part of the historic complex that surrounds Humayan’s Tomb, the recently restored grave of a Mughal emperor that is widely seen as the inspiration for the Taj Mahal.
Known as the Sunder Nursery, it was used in the early 20th century to propagate trees and flowers for the grand new city built when India’s British rulers moved the capital to Delhi from Kolkata.
It remained in use as a government nursery, but the gardens themselves had become subsumed by jungle.
Over the last decade, hundreds of truckloads of construction rubble were removed and 20,000 saplings planted on the site.
Now it combines lakes and pristine tree-studded lawns with Mughal-inspired formal gardens featuring marble fountains and geometric beds of brightly coloured poppies, marigolds and pansies.
