Sunder Nursery

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Sunder Nursery sits on 90 acres of land in Delhi, carrying a name borrowed from a 16th-century Mughal tomb and a colonial-era designation given by British plant experimenters. Today it is called Delhi's Central Park. But the path from a forgotten Mughal garden to one of the city's most celebrated heritage spaces runs through decades of abandonment, a thousand truckloads of rubble, and an alliance between ancient stonecutters' techniques and modern conservation science.

  What drew the Mughals to this particular stretch of land along the Grand Trunk Road? How does a place once known as Azim Bagh, meaning something close to the great garden, end up being named after a British nursery experiment? And what does it take to bring back a classical Persian garden in a 21st-century megacity? Those are the questions Sunder Nursery quietly poses to anyone who walks through its gates.

• 2. A Mughal Foundation

  ›

  Azim Bagh, the name Sunder Nursery carried before the British arrived, was built by the Mughals in the 16th century along the Mughal-era Grand Trunk Road. The park sits adjacent to Humayun's Tomb, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, placing it at the heart of the royal funerary landscape the Mughals created on Delhi's eastern edge. Six of the fifteen heritage monuments within the park now hold UNESCO World Heritage status, among them Sunder Burj, Lakkarwala Burj, Mirza Muazzafar Hussain's Tomb, Chotta Bateshewala, Sundarwala Mahal, and the Unknown Mughal's Tomb.

  The name Sunder itself comes from the Sunder Burj tomb, whose presence gave the entire nursery its identity. That tomb anchors a layered landscape where Mughal-era construction and later British modifications exist side by side. The 16th-century Sunderwala Burj, one of the key monuments restored in recent years, was rebuilt using orange sandstone and white lime mortar that matched its original design. Entire sections of white Quranic verses on its red sandstone interior walls were recreated during the restoration work.

• 3. The British Raj Chapter

  ›

  During the British Raj, this Mughal garden was repurposed as a site for experimental plant cultivation. It was that colonial-era function, housing a lake and serving as a working nursery, that gave the park the name it still carries locally. The British saw the land through a practical botanical lens, a sharp contrast to the Mughal vision of a pleasure garden aligned with classical Persian design principles.

  That renaming left a lasting mark. Even after independence and even after the park's full-scale transformation into a heritage destination, the name Sunder Nursery remained in common local use. The lake that helped justify the nursery designation is still part of the park's landscape today. What the British built on this land never erased what lay beneath it; the monuments survived, waiting for a different kind of attention.

• 4. Rescue and Restoration

  ›

  Plans for the restoration project were drawn up in 2007, and work on the third phase was initiated in 2010, finishing in 2018. When crews first moved in, much of the 90-acre site had been lying abandoned for decades. Around 1,000 trucks of rubble were removed before the ground could be levelled. The Aga Khan Trust for Culture India led the effort jointly with the Archaeological Survey of India and the Central Public Works Department, with additional support from the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, the South Delhi Municipal Corporation, the US Ambassador's Fund for Cultural Preservation, and the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation.

  The design work went far beyond clearing and cleaning. Restoration teams recreated classical Persian gardens complete with fountains and water channels characteristic of that tradition. The Lakkarwala Burj tomb was set within a new rose garden. The park was also designed to replicate four micro-habitat zones that were part of Delhi's original landscape: Kohi, the ridge zone; Bangar, the alluvial zone; Khadar, the riverine zone; and Dabar, the marsh zone. Since 2007, conservation work has taken place on over 50 monuments, of which 12 were designated World Heritage Sites by UNESCO in 2016.

• 5. Reopening Day

  ›

  On the 21st of February 2018-90 acres of Sunder Nursery opened to the public for the first time after the restoration. Vice-President of India M. Venkaiah Naidu attended the inauguration alongside various other dignitaries, including the Aga Khan, founder and chairman of the Aga Khan Development Network.

  The park reopened not just as a historical site but as Delhi's first arboretum, home to over 300 types of trees. That arboretum designation marked a shift in how the park positioned itself: not merely a garden anchored to its Mughal past, but a living collection of trees, many of which exist nowhere else in Delhi. The inauguration closed a gap of decades during which the public had no access to this stretch of heritage land, and it opened a new chapter in how the city relates to the monuments on its eastern edge.

• 6. Living Ecology

  ›

  Over 280 native tree species grow within the park, and using GIS technology, researchers have mapped 4,200 individual trees. Among them is a Pink Cedar, known by the botanical name Acrocarpus fraxinifolius, which is the only specimen of its kind in Delhi. Chukka, known as Croton roxburghii, and Carrotwood, known as Cupaniopsis anacardioides, are also found exclusively here within the city.

  The wildlife dimension of Sunder Nursery extends beyond trees. Around 80 species of birds have been identified through bird mapping, and 36 varieties of butterfly have been spotted in the park. In 2014, the rare Ultramarine Flycatcher was sighted within the park, a bird that had not been seen in New Delhi for many years. The Bonsai House holds specimens over 80 years old, a quiet collection within a landscape otherwise defined by scale and restoration ambition.

• 7. What Comes Next

  ›

  Sunder Nursery's current 90 acres are only part of what the Nizamuddin Urban Renewal Project envisions. Future plans call for the park and restored monuments to eventually cover 900 acres, making it India's largest park. That expansion would fold in nearby areas currently outside the park's boundaries, and it would run under a public-private partnership between various government authorities and the Aga Khan Trust.

  The link to Humayun's Tomb, already a UNESCO World Heritage Site immediately adjacent to the park, gives the eventual 900-acre complex a cultural anchor of international standing. Whether that vision is realized depends on the partnership structures still being finalized, but the 2018 opening demonstrated that a landscape once buried under 1,000 truckloads of rubble could be returned to public life. The 30 heritage structures identified for restoration under the Nizamuddin Urban Renewal master plan represent the next phase of that work.