The Rao Jodha Desert Rock Park in Jodhpur

Jaipur, Feb. 3: The desert safari can now branch off to a new destination — a rock garden.

A rock garden opened today in arid Jodhpur, touted as a first of its kind in the country as it has over 300 varieties of desert plants, some of them found in the great deserts stretching through Pakistan, Afghanistan and West Asia and north Africa.

In Bengal, Darjeeling has a rock garden, as has Chandigarh, but unlike the Rao Jodha Desert Rock Park in Jodhpur, they are not in a dry zone and do not showcase desert plants.

Designed over the past six years with the help of environmentalist Pradip Krishen —author Arundhati Roy’s husband — the sprawling 175-acre park is located near the famous Mehrangarh Fort.

Officials of the Mehrangarh Museum Trust, which helped set up the park, hope that a large number of the tourists who visit the fort would take a look at the garden.

One daunting task for the builders was to get rid of the thorny shrubs dotting the undulating and eroded land. “The place was completely rocky, with no soil and crammed with Mexican plants. What we tried to do was ensure ecological restoration of the entire area,” said Pradip, the author of books like Trees of Delhi.

Then, there were other challenges. The region does not boast a rich eco-system and is largely rocky. Jodhpur is known for its sandstone. Not so well known is rhyolite, a hard, brittle volcanic rock that makes up the entire hill as one winds the way up to the fort atop a hill. The park is situated on an outcrop of volcanic rhyolite so special that the rock feature has been designated a National Geological Monument.

The park also has a patch of salty sand and some wet areas, so it is not exclusively about rock-adapted plants but it is largely a garden featuring lithophytes — plants that grow on rocks — from the Thar desert.

Few plants can survive on desert rocks. Those that do are specially equipped to deal with extremely low levels of moisture. Biologists say rock is even more unforgiving than sand.

Asked why he chose Rajasthan for such a park, Pradip said: “We did not choose Rajasthan, in fact Rajasthan chose us. I had restored the garden at the 12th century Nagaur Fort (135km away) despite water and nutrient shortage problems. The Mehrangarh trust wanted me to do the same here.”

The flora of the Jodhpur garden, sourced from Marwar (south western Rajasthan), also includes grasses and sedges (varieties of grass with solid stems) like peloo (toothbrush tree), sargooro (bitter drumstick tree), bui (desert cotton), missi (cowpea witchweed) and others.

The special attraction is thhor (euphorbia caducifolia). “Thhor is the most prominent plant of the Thar, grows well on rocks and provides a cool and protected habitat that allows other plants to grow around it. That’s why we chose thhor as the emblematic plant for our park,” Pradip said.