History
Raised with waste materials and throw-away items, the Rock Garden of Chandigarh is one of its kinds. Spread over an expanse of 40 acres, this wonderful garden is a ground-breaking conception of Nek Chand, a former Road Inspector in Chandigarh. The garden is located between Sukhna Lake and the Capitol Complex and is styled in the form of an open-air exhibition hall.
The Rock Garden of Chandigarh houses an assortment of sculptures made of curiously shaped pebbles, and waste materials like broken glass bangles, porcelain, forks, discarded fluorescent tubes, play marbles, metal wires, clay and coal, among other things. The style of structures in the garden reflects high resemblance to Mughal ethnicity.
The garden has been designed on the theme of a fantasy land. A great deal of the material used to prepare the Rock Garden is concrete and found objects. Gateways and arches are built from discarded bags of cement that seem to personify the theme. The Rock Garden is planned as an intricate maze, with paths, doorways, steps, courtyards, porches and buildings. The 14 incredible chambers encompassing waterfalls, ponds, statues of animals and birds, helps one stretch their imagination. Walls made of terracotta pots, the maze of trail, valleys and chambers offer the glimpse of a lost kingdom. Nek Chand envisioned this larger than life world, which he went about building single-handed.
Some of the fascinating things that can be found in the garden are armies of stone ducks, papier-mâché soldiers, animal statues and elves. But the highlight of the Rock Garden is that all the illustrations and works of art have been made by using industrial and domestic disposal. Chandigarh Rock Garden is an essence of imagination and innovation that consists of a collection of art objects that would leave one awestruck.
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Trivia
For seven years Nek Chand scoured the Shivalik foothills to collect interestingly shaped stones, building a collection of some 20,000 which he arranged around a tiny hut.
The site of Rock Garden was formerly a dumping ground for industrial waste!
This wonderful garden has not a single flower!
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