Hyderabad: No longer a scenic place of serenity

Jubilee Hills: The condition of Japanese Garden park in plush Jubilee Hills is getting worse. It remains in a pathetic condition as seats are broken and paint has completely peeled off.

The garden located opposite to KBR Park main gate onin Jubilee Hills is a theme-based park with a Japanese touch. It was developed in one acre of land with a cost of Rs 80 lakh by the Urban Biodiversity wing of Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC).

It has attractions like tone lanterns, arches, benches, pebbles, and pathways with granite chips which are usually seen at gazebos in Japan, which gives it a look that is different from other city gardens. It is yet to be discovered by the denizens in good numbers in the city. When it was first opened in 2016, it used to have as many as 2,000 trees of 20 varieties and a small island in a pond with a waterfall connected by a stone-arched bridge for the visitors and daily walkers. A visit to the park reveals the way it is being maintained. Heaps of dry leaves can be seen everywhere. Boundary walls are a little broken and give freeway to people to indulge in anti-social activities during nights.

Such parks in upmarket areas are common for elders to sit in the evening hours passing time. But due to poor management by the civic authorities and broken jogging tracks, they feel hesitant to come for walks in Japanese Garden park. It was meant to be an evergreen calm and peaceful place in a chaotic city, but now it has turned into a dry garden with its thousands of species of vegetation dying slowly. Once it used to be home for peacocks that used to fly over from KBR Park just across the road.

The park is an amalgamation of the Japanese philosophical and spiritual ideologies of space and biodiversity. Lots of rock arrangement was done so that visitors can feel calm and meditate like the Japanese. All the details were brought to life from Satuteiki or 'Creation of Gardens', a guide from the eleventh century that comprises the meticulous detailing of Japanese landscaping. Adding to its biological benefits, no electricity connections were given. The entire garden used to run on solar power. Both the lamps and waterfall have become non-functional.

A daily visitor to KBR Park, Sanjay Borra, who captured the image of piled up dry leaves, noticed that the park is poorly maintained by officials.Manohar Reddy, a resident of Yousufguda, said: "I used to do meditation and mostly catch up with reading. But now I feel very sad and am not even willing to enter the garden observing its poor maintenance.Earlier, the biodiversity of 3,500 sq ft garden was all green in itself, but due to poor maintenance it is losing vegetation as well."