For a green, peaceful life
by: Guest
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Word Count: 702
Feel for green: Landscaping has many facets to it.
Of late, real estate analysts say that we are now witnessing the early signs of a return to the bungalow option. With home loans almost getting to be across-the-table sanctions in most home exhibitions, investment in property is seeing a new time high. Even with respect to individual houses, the percentage has seen appreciable increases in the last three years. Every other builder is buying land and offering it as a gated community, bringing eye-catching patterns in vast g reen terrains and showcasing houses amidst green cover on the city’s outskirts.
It’s interesting to know why people are settling for sites, even if it means a small patch of land. Apart from having the concrete structure take shape with one’s requirements, it’s the space for having a green affair that makes the endeavour a worthwhile one, say many.
Flats may be the order of the day for investments with no hassles of running behind your contractor, but it’s only independent houses that give you room for your green thumb.
How green can one get? Except going green with envy, residents can go green in a hoard of ways for making living ‘green and peaceful’!
Consider the options
Do you remember the old-time bungalows in the city? You would always find them standing majestically in the midst of vast green spaces. Well, they seem to be back in fashion. Gated community, villas in an enclosure, row-houses, patterned homes, designer country houses…the names are many, and so are the inherent choices in them.
“It is not that the gardens of yore were in any way inferior to the ones being designed now, they were stately in their own way,” writes landscape architect Venkatesh Hegde, in one of his articles in ‘More usages for garden space.’ “With new concepts and added usages for garden space gaining popularity, designing a garden architecturally gains importance.” For someone going in for a modest independent house with space and finance constraints, there is little to do except spruce up the little garden. But an unassuming patch with a hedge or two of flowering plants, pots in plenty, creepers spread over a high wall that throws in a good privacy… all these dainty touches will make even a small house look stunningly alive and different from what it was when your broker brought you over for a “dekho.”
For the biggies
If you are designing your bungalow, for instance, there are options and choices galore. Garden plays a vital role in the build of a large bungalow. The traditional option is to have a large patch of green in the front, fringe planting in the sides and a slightly smaller utility-cum-kitchen garden at the rear.
Central courtyard
One could even wrap the entire house around a central courtyard or even come up with the ethnic open-to-the-sky space at the belly of the house and adorn it with greenery.
Bringing several open spaces is an approach where the landscape will merge into the living zones and your gardens will at best be extended living areas. So you can have interior greenery, private garden, party lawn, children’s play area…the list can go on and on. Palatial houses also have green corridors connecting living areas and bedrooms which ooze the affluent features of cordoning off the areas from the visitors’ eye.
If the green patches are not enough, consider the water bodies, pebble beds, swimming pools, streams and rolling meadows…all with a graceful mound that mimic a holiday resort!
Landscaping has many facets to it, given the fact that architectured landscaping in huge sites today is more or less a designer product that caters to big pockets, personality and of course an affluent lifestyle.
But going green, small or big, isn’t so much about money, it’s peace personified.
About the Author
RANJANI GOVIND
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