(Photo Credit: Pexels)
Autumn in Srinagar arrives like a slow exhale. The chinar trees in Shalimar Bagh turn rust and gold, scattering their leaves over Mughal stonework. Water channels carved by Jahangir still carry snowmelt from the Zabarwan mountains, feeding fountains that rise and fall with a meditative rhythm. The symmetry of the charbagh steadies the gaze, while the sound of water softens the breath. It is in such spaces that the idea of the “garden as therapy” takes root. Though designed to impress emperors and guests, Mughal gardens also soothe the senses. Landscape architect Varna Shashidhar, founder of VSLA, calls them “masterpieces of hydrology.” “Being close to water has always been calming,” she reflects, “whether in a charbagh, a stepwell, or a temple tank.”
Shade In The City
That same instinct carries into India’s cities, where people continue to seek shade and quiet. “For a homemaker, praying at a cluster fig tree brought calm,” says Seema Mundoli, professor at Azim Premji University in Bengaluru, whose work focuses on urban nature and sustainability. She recalls students choosing to study under rain trees, or office workers in Delhi who gather beneath trees at lunchtime rather than in fluorescent-lit cafeterias.
Sikandar Lodi Tomb, Delhi (Photo Credit: Pexels)
Preferences vary. Some feel safer in manicured parks, while others are drawn to the biodiversity of wilder, less orderly greenery. In Bengaluru, calm might mean the dense shade of a rain tree on a hot afternoon or the burst of colour when jacaranda and tabebuia bloom along the avenues. “Keep gardens and parks open and free for all,” Mundoli insists. “Access is the first step in making them truly restorative.”
The Science Of Bloom In India’s Gardens
If Mughal charbaghs soothe through symmetry and water, and city parks through shade and access, the science behind their impact runs deeper. “The mass flowering of trees such as tabebuia creates dramatic visual stimuli that elevate mood and mark seasonal rhythms,” explains Dr Subhadhra, ecologist and botanist at ATREE, Bengaluru. Birds, butterflies, and even the simple act of watering a plant, she says, are linked to stress reduction and attention restoration. “Tending plants—removing dry leaves, adding manure, nurturing growth—gives people a sense of agency, almost like caregiving.”
A Char bagh (Mughal style garden divided into four quarters) near Aaram Mandir of Jaigarh Fort, Jaipur (Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons)
She notes a shift toward newer forms of designed landscapes: edible gardens, berry patches, and spaces that invite foraging and tasting. “These are different from ornamental parks,” she says. “While forests inspire awe and adventure, gardens provide everyday spaces where people can safely and meaningfully interact with nature.” For India’s rapidly growing cities, the lesson is urgent. “Cities need to be wrapped in gardens,” she says. “Greenery must be integrated into walls, terraces, and even the smallest corners to create sanctuaries for both people and other species.”
Landscapes Of Memory
For Shashidhar, gardens are also vessels of cultural memory. After training at Harvard and working abroad, she returned to India to create landscapes deeply rooted in context. “In India, we never stand apart from the land,” she says. “From festivals like Onam to sacred groves, people are always personally engaged with nature. Our cultural landscapes preserve watersheds, sacred forests, and biodiversity. They were always designed in symbiosis.”
Mughal gardens (Photo Credit: Maheshwari Vickyraj)
That philosophy shapes her current project in Kathiwada, Madhya Pradesh, where a 20-acre former hunting lodge is being reimagined as a healing garden for the royal family. Trails weave under teak and sal trees alive with birdsong, while indigenous planting is guided by the knowledge of the local Bhil community. “They know medicinal plants intimately—how to use them, how to live symbiotically with the forest,” she says. Here, design isn’t ornamental but ecological and cultural—a retreat into wilderness where the boundaries between ritual, community, and therapy dissolve.
The Mind In Green
Psychologists echo what emperors and ecologists have long intuited. “When we step into a garden, the nervous system gets a chance to reset,” says Dr Divya Ajay, clinical psychologist at Lourdes Hospital in Kochi. “Breathing evens out, muscles relax, and the brain stops scanning for threats. Stress and anxiety reduce because nature slows the racing mind.”
She sees formal and wild spaces as complementary. “Symmetry and balance bring order, almost like meditation. Wild landscapes, by contrast, spark curiosity and a sense of vastness. Both help, but they speak to the mind in different ways.” In today’s cities, she adds, even brief encounters with green spaces help people feel grounded—and human—again.
The Rhythm Of Tea Country In India
Tea gardens in Kerala (Photo Credit: Pexels)
If charbaghs soothe through symmetry and urban parks through shade, Kerala’s tea country offers therapy through rhythm. Author Annabel Streets writes in 52 Ways to Walk that time spent in green landscapes reduces rumination and inflammation, allowing the mind to “reset its circuitry.” That reset is tangible in Munnar, where tea estates unfold like green embroidery across the hills. Workers move slowly between rows of bushes, plucking with deliberate gestures while mist drifts down the slopes. The repetition of labour, the silence between leaves, and the scent of rain-dampened soil become their own form of meditation.
A Quiet Cure
Vibrant orange hues of gulmohar tress (Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons)
Back in Kochi, I carry the memory of those rhythms with me. Sometimes it surfaces while walking past a gulmohar scattering its petals after rain, or when the sea breeze brings a pause to the afternoon heat. Nothing dramatic happens, yet the body softens and the mind unclenches. That is the quiet gift of India’s gardens. They remind us that self-care doesn’t always come in polished packaging. Sometimes it’s symmetry and water. Sometimes it’s the shade of a rain tree. And sometimes, it’s the slow fall of petals under a chinar or a gulmohar—offering the quiet cure we didn’t know we were searching for.
Related: Beautiful Mughal Gardens Of India That Command A Visit
Note:
The information in this article is accurate as of the date of publication.
Written By
Maheshwari Vickyraj
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