Green spaces are at a premium nowadays, why else would apartment complexes like “Botanica” come up with an advertisement that says their USP is the fact that they have a 120 acre botanical garden bang opposite their apartment complex?
Anyway, one of the saving graces to the high-rises dominated landscape in which I live are the Botanical Gardens. With a 3.4 km loop for walkers in inside a forested area where peacocks roam and a manicured garden in the front, it really is a great a nice place to go for a fill of oxygen and nature exploration.
Needless to say, it is one of my favorite places near here. I go there to walk and run ( sometimes alone, and sometimes with the Hyderabad women runner’s Group), and take my kid there to play. My kid loves it, both for the play area ( with huge swings), and the pond with the ducks.
Here are some pictures:
Hibiscus flowers- a lovely shade, quite unusual too:
My kid with a friend at the pond, admiring the ducks:
Manicured front gardens, with a lovely park for kids.
And the awesome greenhouse, designed like a huge turtle, again a hit with the kids.
My only crib with this place is that once in a while they randomly rent it out for “events” . If you happen to land up there on one such evening, you’ll be denied entry unless you have an events pass. Its weird, because there is no way for you to know in advance whether such an event will happen on the day you are going there. Its happenned to me once, when I’d gone there with kids in tow and with full expectation of a nice day at the park, only to be told I need to have a pass for the event.
After threatening the gatekeepers with dire consequences ( none of which I was in a position to follow up on ), they told me there was nothing they could do. APparently, the park maintenance has been let out to a private firm and they are letting it out for these corporate advertising gimmicks.
But thankfully, this will happen only once in a while, and meantime we can enjoy the well-tended gardens, the park, and the trails.
Posted by KBR park in Hyderabad: Another great place for a nature dose « An experiment on living closer to the natural world on April 7, 2010 at 11:14 am
[...] Posted by kopili in Staying fit and healthy, The environment where we live. Leave a Comment In an earlier post, I’d written about the Botanical Gardens in Hyderabad – a great place for a dose of nature. [...]
Posted by When the need for action overcomes ennui « Kopili's Weblog on August 18, 2010 at 6:21 am
[...] a comment Go to comments There is a plot of land in the Kondapur area of Hyderabad called the Botanical Gardens. It is the only green space in this area of high-rises and roads. It is in fact the only public [...]