How Safdarjung Tomb’s Mughal garden is being reimagined for a hotter, drier Delhi

In Delhi, monuments are often spoken of arsenic though they were statues — solid, inert, and adjacent complete. Safdarjung Tomb resists that idea. Long earlier 1 looks up astatine the sandstone-and-marble mausoleum, 1 feels the abstraction astir it: the axial paths pulling the oculus forward, the h2o channels that committedness question but seldom present it, and the wide openness of the charbagh that inactive holds, contempt everything, a definite calm.

Built successful 1754 for Mirza Muqim Abul Mansur Khan-Safdarjung, the Mughal politician of Awadh, the analyzable is usually described arsenic the past of Delhi’s large Mughal plot tombs. It is besides 1 of the city’s afloat realised experiments successful clime plan earlier imperial confidence, and ecological balance, began to fray.

The plot was ne'er meant to beryllium ornamental alone. Like each Mughal charbaghs, it was an engineered landscape, designed to cool, irrigate, choreograph aerial and movement, and connection alleviation from the North Indian summer. Water erstwhile coursed done channels and fountains; trees were planted to calibrate shadiness and humidity; pathways slowed the body, easing some vigor and haste. Paradise, successful the Mughal imagination, was practical.

Over time, Safdarjung Tomb has been conserved repeatedly, mostly with an architectural lens. The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), which protects the tract arsenic a nationalist monument, has carried retired periodic repairs to the mausoleum, bound walls, walkways, and plot features. These interventions stabilised chromatic and aboveground alike. Yet the garden’s deeper systems slipped retired of alignment. Groundwater levels crossed Delhi fell. Historic wells dried. Water features became symbolic alternatively than operative. Planting patterns shifted, often guided by attraction convenience alternatively than biology logic. The charbagh endured, but it stopped working.

It is precisely this condition, alternatively than disposable decay, that has drawn the attraction of the World Monuments Fund (WMF). As portion of its 2026 commitments — much than $7 cardinal supporting 21 projects worldwide — WMF has placed Safdarjung Tomb wrong a broader speech astir historical landscapes nether biology stress. Led by WMF India successful concern with the ASI, the inaugural forms portion of WMF’s Cultivating Resilience programme, which focusses connected gardens and greenish practice spaces facing accelerating clime pressures.

“Historic landscapes are often wherever clime accent archetypal becomes legible,” says Meredith Wiggins, elder director, Climate Adaptation, World Monuments Fund. “They were designed to negociate water, heat, and ecology with bonzer sophistication. When those systems falter, they uncover some biology hazard and an accidental to learn.”

Conservation, not nostalgia

Crucially, the enactment astatine Safdarjung is not open-ended restoration but a one-year, research-led inaugural that began successful July 2025, designed to physique a shared, evidence-based knowing of however the plot was conceived, however it functions today, and however it mightiness beryllium conserved responsibly successful the future.

The archetypal phase, moving from July to September 2025, focussed connected assembling that cognition base. Project teams undertook archival research, on-site surveys, and ocular documentation to hint however the plot was primitively planted and irrigated, however h2o erstwhile moved done its channels, and however rising heat, altered rainfall, and biology accent are affecting it now. The result was not a restoration plan, but thing much fundamental: a wide representation of the garden’s historical structure, biology pressures, and cardinal vulnerabilities.

Phase two, which began successful October 2025, turns that probe outward, onto the crushed itself. Pathways, h2o elements, bound walls, and planted areas are being assessed for stability, risk, and semipermanent attraction needs. This signifier translates humanities penetration into a applicable information appraisal — what tin endure, what is failing quietly, and what demands intervention.

By the extremity of the year, the task volition nutrient a model that integrates humanities knowledge, clime science, and on-site realities. It is intended not arsenic a blueprint for contiguous reconstruction, but arsenic a usher for aboriginal conservation — 1 that allows the plot to stay publically accessible portion becoming environmentally resilient.

“The purpose isn’t to recreate the plot precisely arsenic it was,” says Bénédicte de Montlaur, president and CEO, World Monuments Fund. “It’s to recognize however it was intended to function, and to use those principles successful a mode that works today.”

That equilibrium — betwixt humanities authenticity and ecological realism — is wherever the task becomes astir delicate, adds Bénédicte. Mughal gardens were conceived successful a satellite of perceived abundance, peculiarly of water. To unreal that abundance inactive exists would beryllium irresponsible. Instead, the task asks a subtler question: what did abundance mean? Cooling. Balance. Sensory richness. Ecological order.

For Madhushree Bose, task manager, World Monuments Fund India, the astir damaging alteration astatine Safdarjung Tomb is besides the slightest visible. “The depletion of groundwater has dilatory disabled the garden’s logic,” she says. “The wells are dry. Once that happened, the full h2o strategy collapsed, adjacent though visitors don’t instantly notice.”

Rather than forcing h2o backmost into a stressed landscape, the task explores rain-fed systems, recharge, and seasonal performance. Water, here, is nary longer decorative but functional — an ecological motor calibrated to scarcity. “As climates shift,” Meredith adds, “resilience comes from designing landscapes that tin sorb variability — heat, drought, monsoon — without breaking.”

What makes Safdarjung Tomb particularly resonant is that it remains profoundly used. It is not sealed disconnected arsenic a relic. Children play here. Office workers chopped crossed it. Couples linger. In a warming city, that mundane relation matters.

“Successful conservation contiguous isn’t conscionable astir preserving fabric,” says Malini Thadani, enforcement director, World Monuments Fund India. “It’s astir biology performance, nationalist access, and semipermanent stewardship. Historic places person to lend to municipality resilience, not beryllium extracurricular it.”

If the task succeeds, its implications widen beyond 1 tomb. It suggests a aboriginal wherever practice landscapes are not frozen successful time, but translated — wherever conservation becomes a instrumentality for adaptation, and past offers not nostalgia, but instruction.