The Queen’s Garden or Rani Bagicha or Rani chi Bagh in Camp was one of the tourist attractions for outsiders and even the locals. A peaceful place where even students studied and scored remarkable marks in the exams.
The Graden was built by British somewhere around 1878, We also have one pic clicked in 1878 of the garden.
The Garden had huge trees and people used to sit on branches of the trees there and study for the Annual exams. A special mention has to be made of the lemon trees and its serpentine branches which were favorites with the visitors there.
Today the sight of the Queens Garden is very doleful. Broken benches, chopped trees, electric poles on the ground it looks like this was never a beautiful Garden.
The Cantonment Board of Belgaum in January 2011 decided to start an eco park spread over 3.2 acres next to the Queens Garden. Nor the Eco park nor the somehow maintained Queens garden has been looked after. Even in this state of affairs people flock to the garden but get disheartened with the state in which it is maintained.
This is one of the oldest Garden in Belgaum and seeing this die off is very sad.
I still remember my School days during 1985, when our school conducted drawing competition at Queen’s Garden, it looked as if i am in Europe. it had such a beauty greenery, but now it looks like old fort area.