Soft Landscaping

We begin with the ground. A soil and site survey tells us how deep roots can reach, where water sits, and which micro-climates the property holds. Only then do we draw the planting — in layers, so the garden has depth and shade from the first year and matures into something inevitable.

Our palette leans on species adapted to the region's heat and seasonal water, combined with the ornamental specimens a luxury property expects. The result is planting that looks generous without demanding constant irrigation or replacement.

Because we maintain what we plant, the design is honest about upkeep from the outset. Nothing is specified that the site — and the client's team — cannot realistically sustain.

Most of the sites we work on around Udaipur sit on weathered Aravalli material — shallow, gravelly, sharply drained and low in organic matter, over rock that is often closer to the surface than anybody expects. Where the site has been levelled or built on, the topsoil has usually gone entirely and what remains is compacted subsoil and construction spoil.

Two consequences follow, and they explain most failed planting schemes in this region. The first is that water passes through faster than roots can take it up, so plants that should be drought-tolerant still fail in their first summer because they never established a deep enough root system. The second is that soils here tend to run alkaline and calcareous, which locks up iron and manganese and produces the yellowing between leaf veins that gets misdiagnosed as underwatering and then watered to death.

So we test before we plant, and we build soil rather than import a lorry of black earth and hope. That usually means deep cultivation to break the pan, bulk organic matter worked through the full rooting depth rather than dropped in the planting pit, and where the pH demands it, sulphur or an acidifying regime rather than repeated iron sprays that treat the symptom every year.

Planting into an unamended pit in compacted ground creates what is effectively a bucket — it fills in the monsoon, drowns the roots, and the plant that survives never leaves the pit it was planted in.

We compose planting in four layers, and each does a job the others cannot.

The canopy sets the microclimate. In this climate that is not decoration — shade from a well-placed tree lowers the ground temperature beneath it materially, and everything planted under it needs less water for the rest of its life. Canopy decisions are the ones that are hardest to reverse and should be made first.

The understorey — small trees and large shrubs — gives the garden its structure at eye level and does the screening work. This is the layer that makes a garden feel enclosed and finished, and it is the layer most often left out when a scheme is value-engineered.

The shrub layer carries most of the flower and most of the seasonal change. It is also the layer that can be revised later without starting again, so it is where we take the interesting risks.

The groundcover is the one that repays itself fastest. Bare soil in Udaipur bakes, crusts and loses water. Covered soil holds moisture, stays cooler, and suppresses the weeds that otherwise consume a gardener's whole week.

Canopy. Cassia fistula for the yellow in May, Delonix regia where there is room for it, Millettia pinnata (karanj) for reliable dense shade and a deep root that will not lift paving, and Ficus religiosa or Ficus benghalensis only where there is genuinely space and no building within reach of the roots. Azadirachta indica (neem) remains the most useful tree in this region and the most undervalued.

Understorey. Plumeria for sculpture and scent, Tabernaemontana divaricata for white flower in shade, Murraya paniculata as a hedge that will take clipping and still flower, and Thevetia peruviana where nothing else will hold.

Shrub. Bougainvillea in its shrub forms, Nerium oleander, Ixora coccinea, Hamelia patens, Duranta erecta for its golden forms and its willingness to be clipped, and Russelia equisetiformis spilling over edges and walls.

Groundcover. Wedelia trilobata where it can be contained, Alternanthera for colour blocks in formal work, ornamental grasses for movement, and mulch — coarse, deep and renewed — wherever planting has not yet closed over.

We also plant for pollinators as a matter of course rather than as an added feature, which is covered on the ecology section of the main site.

Lawn is the highest water demand, the highest labour demand and the highest input demand of anything we install, and in this climate that is worth saying plainly before it is drawn.

Cynodon dactylon (Bermuda, the common 'doob' selections) establishes fast, takes hard wear, and repairs itself. It wants full sun and it browns off in cold weather. It is the default for lawns that get walked on.

Zoysia is slower to establish and slower to repair, but denser once it is in, better in part shade, and noticeably lower in water and mowing demand once established. On estate and hotel work where the lawn is looked at more than it is used, it is usually the better long-term answer.

Paspalum vaginatum is worth specifying where the water available is brackish or the site is close to treated effluent reuse, because it tolerates salinity that would kill the alternatives.

What we most often recommend is simply less of it — lawn where people actually sit or play, and layered planting everywhere it was drawn only because the space had to be filled. That single change does more for a property's water bill than any irrigation specification, though the irrigation design matters too.

A planting scheme is not finished when it is planted. It is finished when it is established, and in this climate that takes about eighteen months and two summers.

Through the first summer, watering is frequent and deliberately deep — shallow frequent watering trains roots to stay near the surface, which is precisely what kills a plant in its second May. Through the first monsoon we watch drainage, because that is when a soil problem announces itself. Through the first winter we prune formatively, while it still costs nothing to correct.

We also expect and plan for losses. A scheme with no failures in its first year has usually been over-watered and over-fed, and will be weaker at five years than one that lost a few plants and had them replaced. Our establishment contracts carry a defined replacement provision so this is an agreed position rather than an argument.