Asia’s largest rose garden has over 1,600 varieties of roses spread across 30 acres in the heart of Chandigarh
The annual Rose Festival in February draws hundreds of thousands of visitors from across North India
Named after Zakir Husain, India’s third President, the garden opened in 1967 and has never stopped blooming
In the second week of February, something shifts in Chandigarh. It is subtle at first: a few more cars parked near Sector 16, a slight increase in the foot traffic on the roads leading toward the garden. Then, on a Saturday morning, you turn the corner and the garden is in full colour. Roses everywhere, in every combination of red and pink and yellow and white and orange that botanists have managed to engineer over centuries of patient work.
The Zakir Husain Rose Garden is, by formal measurement, Asia’s largest rose garden. It covers 30 acres, contains over 1,600 varieties of roses, and is planted with more than 50,000 rose bushes. These numbers are impressive on paper. In February, when the garden is in full bloom, the numbers stop mattering and you just walk.
Who It Is Named For
Zakir Husain was India’s third President, serving from 1967 until his death in office in 1969. He was also a scholar, an educationist, and the founder of Jamia Millia Islamia in Delhi. The rose garden in Sector 16 was named after him in 1996, though the garden itself was established in 1967 under the direction of M.S. Randhawa, who was then the Chief Commissioner of Chandigarh.
Randhawa was a remarkable figure. An ICS officer who was also a serious botanist and art historian, he conceived the rose garden as part of his vision for Chandigarh as a city of trees and gardens. He wanted every sector of the city to have green spaces, and he wanted those green spaces to be worth something. The rose garden was his most ambitious horticultural project.
The Rose Festival
The Rose Festival has been held annually since 1974. It typically runs for three days in February, when the roses are at their peak. The festival includes competitions for the best blooms, cultural performances, food stalls, and a general atmosphere of city-wide celebration that is hard to find in most Indian cities.
The competition categories at the Rose Festival are specific and fiercely contested. Best red rose. Best yellow rose. Best bicolour. Best miniature. The judges are knowledgeable, the competitors are serious, and the discussions in the exhibition tents about the relative merits of different varieties can go on for hours.
Hamare parivaar ke log teen generation se iss festival mein aate hain. Meri naani bhi aati thiin, meri maa bhi aati hain, ab main apne bachche ko laata hun. Yahi Chandigarh ki pehchaan hai. (Three generations of our family have been coming to this festival. My grandmother came, my mother comes, now I bring my children. This is Chandigarh’s identity.)Gurpreet Kaur, resident of Sector 35, Chandigarh
What You Find in the Garden
The garden is divided into sections, each planted with different varieties. There are climbing roses on trellises, standard roses on long straight beds, miniature roses that require you to crouch down to appreciate them properly. There is a section devoted to the newer hybrid tea roses, and sections where older varieties that predate the hybridisation era are maintained.
The garden is also planted with trees, medicinal plants, and herbs, so even when the roses are not in season, it remains a pleasant place to walk. There are benches throughout. The morning light, particularly in winter, is excellent.
For photographers, the garden in February is one of the most productive subjects in the Tricity. The variety of colours and forms means that you can spend an entire morning shooting without repeating yourself. The tourist authorities know this, and the garden’s maintenance in February reflects it.
Practical Notes
The garden is located in Sector 16, opposite the Government Museum and Art Gallery. Entry is free. The garden is open throughout the year, though the experience in February is categorically different from any other month.
In December and January, the maintenance staff spend considerable effort preparing for February: pruning, feeding, managing the irrigation. The work that produces those three weeks of colour takes months of preparation. This is worth remembering when you walk through the garden during the festival: what looks effortless took all winter.
The Rose Garden is also available for events and exhibitions, and the municipal administration holds several cultural programmes there beyond the annual festival. It is, in the fullest sense, a public garden: maintained by the city for everyone in it.
And in February, for three extraordinary days, it belongs to anyone willing to show up and look.
Zakir Husain Rose Garden, Chandigarh | Symbolic picture | Photo: Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA) | For representation