Nature trail explores the nooks and corners of Lal Bagh

A city-based graphic designer has been organising unique nature trails in Lal Bagh Botanical Gardens every weekend.

Abhishek Khan started hosting these nature walks in January this year. Since then the walks have covered a vast variety of topics — from wild mangoes to tree telepathy. These walks showcase what one can learn from simply stepping into the park which houses 2,100 species of plants and nearly 8,500 trees.

The 37-year-old started researching about the park in south Bengaluru five years ago. He took the help of Suresh Jayaram, art historian and author of Bangalore’s Lalbagh: A Chronicle Of The Garden And The City.

“Lal Bagh is basically a tree museum without any context or information. The space has so much to offer, but there is very little information out there. Even the books that have been published on Lal Bagh look at it through an anthropological lens. I was interested in exploring the botany,” he tells Metrolife.

Khan is also the creator of LalBagh.info, a free guide to the sprawling gardens. The website provides information about the various seasonal flowers spread across the 240-acre space and also a map showcasing the flowers, along with monuments and other interesting nooks and corners in the park.

So far, Khan has organised nature walks spanning 10 topics — botany of healing, perfume, alcohol, aphrodisiacs, psychedelics, exotic summer fruits, culinary delights, wild mangoes, house plants, and telepathy of trees. Each walk accommodates 15 participants and lasts a minimum of two hours.

During summer, he conducted a walk covering the many varieties of mangoes in Lal Bagh. “The bountiful mangoes produced in Lal Bagh is an open secret. Every mango tree is a different variety, and each has a different fragrance and taste. There are mangoes that are bigger than your face and some that taste like guavas. These are all natural varieties,” he shares.

On Sunday, he will be hosting a walk exploring the botany of alcohol. This walk will focus on how various cultures around the world use certain fruits to produce alcohol. “We look at the trees in the context of the region they originated from. Take the sausage tree for example, we know it as a tree that damages our cars by falling on them, but there are four tribes in and around Mount Kenya that use this fruit to brew alcohol. To them it’s an important ritualistic fruit,” he elaborates.

Priced at Rs 800 per person, the walks take place every Sunday, from 7.30 am to 9.30 am, at Lal Bagh Botanical Gardens. For details, check @lalbagh.info on Instagram.