New Delhi, March 15 -- Spring has arrived in Bengaluru and flowers are everywhere-on trees, in parks, in flower markets, in nurseries, at traffic junctions, at wedding venues in different colours, shapes, sizes and fragrances.

This is no longer the garden city I grew up in. Roads, multi-storeyed buildings, apartment complexes and concrete infrastructures have gobbled up private land. But miraculously, the gardens have survived. They live on in different spaces-they have flown up into terraces and balconies. They have spread out in corporate and apartment complex gardens. Hotels have landscaped gardens and so does the airport. Cubbon Park and Lalbagh have nurtured their old flowering trees, which have come from different parts of the eart...