Abstract

jyoti pandey sharma the Subcontinent’s colonial garden history being a relatively recent subject of Introduction academic attention, garden structures including glass houses stand out on The 19th-century English garden and park, like its other urban spatial counter- account of an almost absent scholarship. This essay, while tracing the evolution parts, notably the railway station, library, club and museum, was a consumer of of the glass house in the Indian Subcontinent, examines in detail a glass house, the industrial technology of the day. A typical 19th-century garden and park of the more utilitarian type, built to supply plants to the residence of the went beyond showcasing its horticultural attributes to include built forms in Viceroy in British India’s summer capital, Simla, (even as officially spelt as the form of garden structures that contributed in equal measure to its utilitar- Shimla since 1983, the older version has been retained for the sake of topi- ian, scientific and aesthetic expression as did the plant material. The most cality). It hopes to draw attention to the glass house as an equally valuable popular built forms found in the garden included the lodge; refreshment room; cultural asset in the Subcontinent’s colonial garden history as