Girl Coconutty
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Walk with her as you explore and enjoy a peaceful, green addtition to the city landscape -- the newly created Japanese Gardens or Pune-Okayama Maitri (Friendship) Park, aka, Pu La Despande Park after the famous author.
Excerpts from an article on IndiaTimes...
It took two years to realise this simplistic, yet spectacular, garden spread over 10 acres of land in the Pu La Deshpande Park on Sinhgad Road.
The Pune - Okayama Friendship Garden, as it is called, proved to be a great challenge for the Pune-based architect and landscape designers Shobha Bhopatkar and Mahesh Nampurkar, who worked with the Chief Garden Superintendent, PMC, Yeshwant Khaire.
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“Although the stone laying was done almost a year ago, the real work began to shape up only in the last six to eight months,” informs Khaire. “Owing to the monsoons we really couldn’t work out the details of this huge and prestigious project. This garden was to be a replica of the Japan’s well-known Korakuen Garden, which has a 300-year-old history.
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“We had this land with us and even in the initial proposal of the Pu La Deshpande garden, there is a mention of creating a Japanese garden, following his life and travels to the City of the Rising Sun. It was a coincidence that the Japanese team from Shimoden liked this area after scouting the city for several other areas,” adds Khaire.
The biggest obstacle, as it turned out, was the language barrier . Mahesh Nampurkar, however , says that the initial hiccups were soon settled and they found a language through the sketches.
The Japanese selected this site because the surroundings of the hills and the green foliage served as the ideal backdrop, blending in perfectly with the Japanese belief in simple, but intricate and beautiful design.
Shobha and Mahesh, along with Khaire, visited Okayama and saw two famous gardens, Korakuen and Himeji garden. “We were looking at the technicalities of handling and executing the designs and technical details that the Japanese had asked for,” says Khaire. “Besides this, we were also considering whether creating this huge garden in a Japanese style was practically possible.”
Khaire also remarks that the Japanese ideology and attitude to work is very different. “When we began practically executing the design,” he says, “we gave the solid team of 400 plus an audiovisual idea of what we had to create . We decided to create a combination of Japanese designs with Indian ones.”
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“We faced a problem when it came to the selection of plants. The Japanese team was looking for evergreen plants that would be easy to maintain and prune into shapes. They scouted around, and saw many nurseries and then decided upon Indian plants like Bakul, Putranjeeva, Bamboo shoots, filicum , Khaya and Mango trees,” explain both Nampurkar and Khaire.
“The characteristics of this garden involve a composition of fire, harmony, line, spirit world and water. Thus this garden expresses the various elements of light and darkness, softness and hardness , stillness and motion and warm and cold,” says Nampurkar.
The garden has simple lines and recreates the spirit of Zen philosophy.
“This garden is a perfect bridge between the two cities, encouraging culture, tradition and friendship,” concludes Khaire.
The garden opened to the public on February 1, 2006. |
Mrudul S
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There are several places in and around Pune. Vitthalvadi having a temple on the banks of river Mutha, Sinhgad a castle on the west of Pune, Baneshwar, Okayama Park on Sinhgad road, Manas Resort on Paud Road. There are various good restarants near Chandani Chowk like Garden restaurant, Ambrosia Garden restaurant, Konark Gardens in this area. You may go to Peacock Bay, Khadakvasala NDA road. The only problem you will face that all these places are in the outskirts of the main city and if you are staying in the city then to come out of the city and visit some of these places, then it will be better if you have your own car either hired or owned. It takes too much of the time to come to the place. One more thing that you should not go alone with your gf till very late in the evening in a very lonely place. Pune city is little conservative and people donot like couples free romantic behaviour in public places. |
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