Rock garden

1. ROCK GARDEN

2. Rock Garden is a sculpture garden in Chandigarh , India , also known as Nek Chand's Rock Garden , after its founder, Nek Chand , a government official who started the garden secretly in his spare time in 1957. Today it is spread over an area of forty-acre (160,000 m²), it is completely built of industrial & home waste and thrown-away items

3. The Rock Garden project was secretly initiated by Nek Chand around 1957. It was discovered by the authorities in 1975, by which time it had grown into a 12-acre (49,000 m 2 ) complex of interlinked courtyards, each filled with hundreds of pottery-covered concrete sculptures of dancers, musicians, and animals. The authorities took over, and the garden was inaugurated as a public space in 1976. It is presently run by the Rock Garden Society.

4. Nek Chand Saini is an Indian self-taught artist, famous for building the Rock Garden of Chandigarh, a forty-acre (160,000 m²) sculpture garden in the city of Chandigarh, India. His family moved to Chandigarh in 1947 during the Partition. At the time, the city was being redesigned as a modern utopia by the Swiss/French architect Le Corbusier . It was to be the first planned city in India, and Chand found work there as a roads inspector for the Public Works Department in 1951.

5. GALLERY

6. In addition to the rocks other materials were collected. The material came from the villages destroyed to make way for the new city of Chandigarh. Certain fragments of these villages caught Nek Chand’s eye and he began actively searching and collecting particular discarded objects. These fragments were the remains of the villages, and consisted largely of everyday mundane possessions such as broken pots and bottles

7. At some stage in 1965 a more conscious effort was made to transform the found fragments and to arrange the rocks into a formal display . The site was also in a dense area of vegetation and needed to be cleared. Concrete and mud flooring was prepared and initial structures made up of oil drums and iron shuttering were constructed. With the PWD stores acting as a suitable decoy an alternative Chandigarh was being constructed behind the shuttering and scrap materials

8. Situated in the thick forest area, this gardens hold its own charms for the visitors. It is full of objects built from household and industrial waste. There are no flowers or plants in this garden. The object to be seen there are the figure made of raw cement resembling humans and animals. These figures have been decorated with broken but colourful odds and ends of China clay. As one looks at them with deep intent, they seem to be staring as the visitors. They seem to be engaged in various activities. There are group of dancing damsels made from bicycle and motorcycle's waste materials, marching armies of warriors resting flying or fledging birds made from countless bite of broken glass. There are groups of music bands engaged in their activity of entertaining the visitors. Its creator also needs a mention.

9. Chandigarh rock garden is an epitome of creativity and innovation. It is a unique garden that consists of various art objects. But the best part about the rock garden is that each of its artwork has been made by using industrial & urban waste. The credit for laying its foundation goes to Nek Chand , who was the then Road Inspector in the Engineering Department of Chandigarh Capital Project.