Rock garden

General Knowledge

Rock garden:

It is a forty acre sculpture garden created by Nek Chand Saini. Nek chand was employed as a road inspector for the public works department and started clearing a little patch and collecting material from demolition sites around the city. He set stones around the little clearing and sculptured a few figures recycled from materials. The land he was working on was not his own, but a government area where no development or building of any kind was permitted. Unlike other Indian cities, Chandigarh was carefully planned and only authorized development was permitted. Nek Chand’s work was illegal but he able to hide it for 18 years before it was discovered by the authorities in 1975. The complex by the time had grown into an interlinked courtyard having sculptures made of cement with an outer skin of broken bangles.

As this creation developed so did the support and interest of the citizens of Chandigarh. In the year 1976 the city authorities were forced by the public opinion to relieve Nek Chand of his duties as Road Inspector. His kingdom was inaugurated officially as the Rock Garden and administered by the city of Chandigarh. He not only used broken crockery, tiles but fluorescent tubes. More than 5,000 peoples visit this artistic creation each day.