A CITY AND ITS GARDENS: AUROVILLE, TAMIL NADU

“Auroville will be the place of an unending education, of constant progress, and a youth that never ages”. — The Mother

- Anandit Sachdev, Rupal Rathore, Vir Shah

These words were read out by The Mother on February 28, 1968 as representatives of 124 nations and all states of India placed handfuls of earth from their homelands into a marble-clad urn to symbolise human unity – the stated purpose behind the birth of Auroville, a self-governing, international city located 5 km off the coast of the Bay of Bengal. More than 5,000 people gathered on inauguration day at the amphitheatre that had been built along with Matrimandir [the Temple of The Mother] in what was to become the central core of the city, now known as the Peace Area. The Peace Area also contains 12 main gardens around Matrimandir [which are in varying stages of completion], peripheral green spaces and a surrounding lake, all planned by the late French architect Roger Anger, who had been appointed by The Mother to oversee the physical development of Auroville. The Matrimandir gardens are part of Anger’s Galaxy Plan and were each assigned a spiritual theme by The Mother, along with a list of flowers that she had chosen for them. The 12 gardens, together with Matrimandir, symbolise the spirit of unity that gave birth to Auroville, and aspire to reveal specific spiritual qualities to those experiencing them. In 2019, the Matrimandir Executive Team announced an open call to design four out of the 12 gardens around Matrimandir – Light, Life, Power, and Wealth. “We worked with the agenda of restoring peace in the Peace Area while formulating the selection process,” says Hemant Shekhar, a Matrimandir executive at the time. “The gardens had not progressed for six years due to the internal conflicts in Auroville.”