GROWING ROOTS OF AN URBAN HOME

Landscape architect Anita Tikoo's Delhi home, with its interwoven gardens spread across multiple levels, demonstrates the potential of small urban spaces to nurture a life connected to nature.

- PRACHI SATRAWAL

I USED to be like many urban people, dreaming of moving to the mountains, owning an acre of land, and growing food," muses Anita Tikoo, a landscape architect by profession, urban gardener by passion, and home chef and blogger by delight. Her home in Delhi is a microcosm of possibilities. "Once I started gardening, I realised an acre of land is too much.

If you're planning to avoid waste, you simply cannot produce that much food," she reflects. Her journey, deeply rooted in her modest urban garden, has been transformative-showing the potential of small spaces to cultivate big dreams.

Built in 1981 as a single-storey house, Tikoo's home has evolved into a functional and aesthetic three-level space. The ground floor remains the family's sanctuary; the first floor houses her architecture studio, and the third floor serves as her passion space-a haven for gardening, community gatherings, and an extension of her blog, Mad Tea Party. The garden extends through these levels, embodying her belief in the power of green spaces in urban living.

The garden lab

Ascending the levels of Tikoo's house reveals that this is no ordinary urban home. "My garden has been an incubator for many of my landscape concepts," Tikoo admits. "Most clients prefer clipped, manicured lawns, but I've grown increasingly disenchanted with that aesthetic. If you keep a lawn super-clipped and neat, birds won't come. They need places to hide and nest. In Indian aesthetics, we had van (forests), parks. Even in old Pahari or miniature paintings, you see wild meadows, not perfectly manicured spaces."

Her approach draws on these ethos, creating landscapes that harmonise with Delhi's arid climate. "Native plants thrive with minimal irrigation and give so much back-fruits, flowers, and habitat for pollinators," she explains.