Confession time.
All these years I have lived in Delhi and never been to the beautiful Sunder Nursery (pun time *) but thanks to my friend Catriona Child, that omission was corrected at the weekend.
What a place.
The government run nursery is at the back of Humayun’s Tomb – next to the car park, in fact – and is architecturally and historically part of this bigger complex. Apparently it was shamefully neglected for years, but now there is a lot of renovation work afoot, largely thanks to the brilliant Aga Khan Foundation. Picture if you will – but I think every single person in Delhi has been there except me – a (now) landscaped garden, with water bodies and neat paths and tombs and little pavilions scattered all over the place, and a bonsai pavilion and tucked away in the corner, a great nursery, with very reasonably priced plants and seeds, and you have the Sunder Nursery.
The Central Axis being brought back to life.
Isn’t this lovely?
Seeds being dried (below)
The bonsai garden (below) with (and I quote the information panels) “playful and staggered platforms”.
Quite.
Pavilions (above) and ruins (below) – absolutely charming.
As for the nursery bit of all this – well, they have masses of very reasonably priced plants and seeds. I bought 4 lemon saplings for Rs 50 a throw, which is brilliant.
Courteous service, lots of filling out of proper invoices by hand, with name, address and phone number – that kind of thing – then paying somewhere else, where the whole process is repeated. But the place is so pretty and the staff are so sweet that it hardly matters.
Oh.
Yes.
The pun * Sunder = beautiful in Hindi.
So very appropriate.
The nursery and the monuments are open from 9-5. Nursery closed between 1-2pm for lunch.