The Masters of the Garden

Prabhakar B. Bhagwat

The father of landscape architecture in India — a discipline grown from native soil, climate and the subcontinent's own traditions

Widely regarded as India's first qualified landscape architect and the father of the discipline in the country, Prabhakar B. Bhagwat founded its teaching, its national society and its leading studio lineage — insisting that an Indian landscape be grown from native plants, climate and the subcontinent's own traditions.

Ravindra Bhan

A founder of landscape architecture in India, who taught the profession to read the land first

Ravindra Bhan was among the founders of landscape architecture as a profession in India — a teacher and practitioner who insisted that landscape is a structural response to land, climate and terrain, and that in a hot, water-stressed country native planting and natural contours beat the borrowed lawn.

Mohammad Shaheer

The quiet poet of Indian landscape — restraint, water and the living charbagh

Mohammad Shaheer was among India's most revered landscape architects and a teacher at SPA Delhi. His restrained, contextual gardens — the Garden of Five Senses, Sanskriti Kendra and sensitive heritage settings — married the Mughal charbagh to a modern ecological care, native planting and a contemplative quiet.

Kishore D. Pradhan

A pioneer of Indian landscape architecture, shaping campuses and resorts with a tropical, climate-aware sensibility

Kishore D. Pradhan belongs to the first generation of Indian landscape architects — pioneers who had to invent their profession. Through campus, institutional and resort landscapes, and through teaching and professional bodies, he advanced a tropical, climate-aware Indian approach: shade over lawn, native planting, water used wisely.