Pune’s gardens grow on sixty-six-million-year-old lava, in the rain shadow of the Western Ghats. We design formal, generous landscapes that belong to that ground.
Pune stands on the Deccan Traps — flood basalts that erupted around sixty-six million years ago, at the boundary that ended the dinosaurs. The soils that weather from that basalt swing between extremes: thin stony murum that sheds water in minutes, and deep black cotton clays that swell with every monsoon and shrink through every summer, cracking whatever was built carelessly on top of them.
The Sahyadris wring the monsoon nearly dry within a hundred kilometres, leaving Pune with roughly 720–760 mm a year where the ghat crests receive several times that. A lawn, a path or a pergola here either respects that arithmetic or fails on it.
Green Architects brings two decades of South Indian practice to basalt country — and makes it formal, flowering and beautiful. Every detail below starts from what is under the topsoil, not from a mood board.
The Deccan steps in trap terraces — so our lawns do too.
Pune’s plots rarely sit flat. Instead of fighting the fall with fill, we step it — broad lawn terraces held by dry-laid basalt risers, each base lined with a continuous band of seasonal colour. The terraces slow monsoon runoff, hold it long enough to soak, and give the garden its architecture.
On expansive clays, paving laid casually heaves in its first monsoon. Our walks are detailed for shrink–swell ground — riven basalt slabs on a designed sub-base, flush kerbs, hedges trained hard on either side and flower borders layered behind them. Formal to the eye, engineered underneath.
With a heat island measured in whole degrees, outdoor rooms need real shade. Timber pergolas on slim basalt piers carry Rangoon creeper overhead; clipped hedges and white flowering borders hold the edge; the lawn opens beyond. It is the wada veranda, rebuilt as landscape.
In Maharashtra, Green Architects practises as a design consultancy. Concept to detailed design, planting plans, approvals support and supervision documentation come from our studio; execution on the ground is delivered by your contractor or our vetted local partners, building to our drawings.
Masterplans, arrival sequences, courtyards and terraces for Pune’s campuses — designed to stay composed from March heat through the September monsoon.
Community commons, clubhouse grounds and villa gardens — formal, flowering, and planned around the Trees Act and UDCPR open-space norms from the first sketch.
Campuses, healthcare and hotel grounds where shade placement, terracing and soil-aware detailing decide whether the landscape works — not just how it renders.
Rainwater harvesting, recharge and greywater reuse integrated into the landscape itself — designed for a city that lives dam-to-dam on 29 TMC of Khadakwasla storage.
The full studio scope is on our Landscape Architectural Design page — and you can walk our own demonstration landscape, The Grove, before you commission anything.
Felling needs the Tree Officer’s prior permission — and the law requires compensatory planting equal to the estimated age of the felled tree, each sapling at least six feet tall, kept alive for seven years. We survey first and design around what stands.
Older trees classed as heritage go to the Maharashtra State Tree Authority, as does any proposal touching more than 200 trees — and every felling application must include an alternate design option. Our default is to make the tree the design.
Larger layouts must earmark 10% as recreational open space, and the UDCPR carries dedicated regulations for rainwater harvesting, rooftop solar and greywater reuse. We resolve each inside the landscape, not bolted on after.
Fell a sixty-year tree in Pune and the law asks for sixty planted in its place — alive seven years later.
A published Pune inventory lists 127 native species fit for urban landscapes — while three exotics make up nearly half the city’s tree count. We build permanent structure from the native list, then train the formality on top: hedges, borders, massed seasonal colour.
What we plant less of: Gliricidia and Subabul already account for a third of Pune’s trees, and researchers flag Peltophorum, Cassia siamea and other drive-planted exotics as naturalising invasively. Our structure planting is native-first by default — the exotics earn their place or they don’t get one.
Rock depth, soil type — murum or black cotton — drainage, existing trees, sun and slope. Measured, not assumed.
Terraces, walks, shade courts, water and boundaries — the big moves, set on the real levels.
Materials, retaining details, planting plans, lighting and irrigation — resolved for shrink–swell ground.
Tree Officer permissions, UDCPR open-space and rainwater norms handled inside the design, with the alternate options the law asks for.
Execution drawings, schedules and site-visit supervision for your contractor or our vetted local partners.
We have not built in Pune yet, and we won’t dress that up. What we bring is a two-decade design practice, a method built for hard ground and hard light, and a demonstration landscape — The Grove — where you can walk what we design before you commission it. In Maharashtra we work as design consultants; your project is built to our drawings, under our supervision documentation.
Send us your plot plan, a few photographs, or just a pin on the map — and we’ll tell you honestly what we would do with the ground you have.
