During my short stay in India last week , I went with  my group of friends, neighbours and family to visit  a very famous Rock Garden  which is a sculptured garden completely made by using a variety of different discarded waste materials like broken bangles,tube lights,tiles,mudguards etc.  This garden  is an epitome of creativity & a very innovative garden situated near Sukhna lake in Chandigarh .

First I would like to share with you  a bit about the founder and builder of Rock Garden-Mr. Nek Chand.

Nek Chand was displaced from his homeland when India was granted independence from the British Empire and partitioned from Pakistan in 1947, and he fled with his family to Chandigarh. The old city was torn down and rebuilt under plans developed by the Swiss architect, Le Courbusier, in the early 1950s. Nek Chand became a road builder and inspector, but his work after hours consisted of carrying away pieces of the former city?s debris by bicycle to a site on government-owned land where he clandestinely began to build what eventually became the Rock Garden.

In his spare time, Chand began collecting materials from demolition sites around the city. He recycled these materials into his own vision. It is  a 40-acre (160,000 m²) complex of interlinked courtyards, each filled with hundreds of pottery-covered concrete sculptures of dancers, musicians, and animals. Made from recycled materials, he builds up the mass with a cement and sand mix before adding a final coating of smoothly burnished pure cement combined with waste materials such as broken glass, bangles, crockery, mosaic and iron-foundry slag.

Using discards and castoffs in the traditional methods , Nek Chand utilized broken pottery, ceramic tiles, electrical fixtures, cement, Rebar, broken glass, mirrors and innumerable other found materials while making this garden.  The rock garden is  made out of recycled materials & with the government's help, Nek Chand was able to set up collection centers around the city for waste materials.

It?s amazing how using all recycled items such as bangles, ceramics pots, electrical waste, bottles etc, he created this entire park.

We walked in tunnels, bridges, beside waterfalls all inside this big park. Awesome!This place is the perfect example of how to use nature?s resources to create an amazing work of art using things which we routinely trash. The entrance itself was this cave like hole into a mountain. Once we entered it and passed it, it felt like entering some different type of world altogether where still, rocks came to life due to the skills of the crafts men .

A true masterpiece with a difference. Every other thing  we think is not relevant or is worthy of disposing is used here as a piece of art. Structures and sculptures in this park are designed and built by innovative techniques using discarded drums and sacks to mould concrete for walls and pillars.

This garden was featured in India's 65th Republic Day parade in New Delhi on 26th January 2014 .  A motorized tableau representing the Rock Garden l included structures made from recycled materials, a miniature waterfall, murals, and five people acting as visitors. 

Chand's statues have found their way into museums across the world, including an environment at the Capitol Children?s Museum in Washington, DC, the American Folk Art Museum in New York City and the main entrance to the Collection de l'art brut in Lausanne, Switzerland. The John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Wisconsin, USA owns the largest collection of Nek Chand's work outside of Chandigarh. The pieces were on exhibition there from June 2007 to January 2008 as part of the museum's focus on artist environment builders, or outsider artists.

He used urban waste material like bottles, tin cans, broken plugs, plates, saucers and created amazing creative patterns and textures. Even dull rocks turned into art objects.

The garden is most famous for its sculptures made from recycled ceramic. It is considered as one of the seven Wonders Of India.

The garden is now protected by the city as one of its best-known tourist attractions. This garden is really very inspiring and teaches us a lesson once again that  nothing is to be discarded.