Nek Chand was an Indian self-taught artist who was best known for transforming trash and debris into the thousands of sculptures that make up the Rock Garden of Chandigarh, an assembly of which is located in a forest on the outskirts of Chandigarh, India. He was born on December 15, 1924, in Berian Kalan, Tehsil Shakargarh, India, British Empire [now in Punjab province, Pakistan] and passed away on June 12, 2015, in Chandigarh.

Chand moved out of his parents’ house as a teenager to live with an uncle and go to high school. He returned to his family’s hamlet after graduating and started a farming business there. But when British authority ended in 1947 and India was divided, Chand’s Hindu family was forced to leave their village, which was inside Muslim Pakistan. Chand relocated to Chandigarh, the state capital of Punjab and Haryana, in 1955. Swiss architect Le Corbusier, who was selected by the Indian government to create a new metropolitan capital, was now rebuilding the metropolis.

Chand secured employment with the public works department as a highways inspector. In his free time, starting in 1958, Chand began gathering materials for a garden he planned to create in a forest that bordered the city. He rode his bike through the city and countryside for eighteen years, searching for stones and pebbles, recyclable materials from garbage piles, and remnants of the twenty or so little towns that had been demolished to make way for the new city. He started constructing the garden and setting everything up in 1965. Since the government had declared the area to be a no-building zone and it was protected public land, Chand operated covertly and illegally.

When a government official learned about the project in 1972, the government decided not to destroy Chand’s garden, which at the time spanned 12 acres (about 5 hectares), in response to the public’s overwhelming support. Rather, it was placed under government oversight, and 50 workers were sent to help Chand manage the project and see it through to completion. Even after the rock garden was made public in 1976, Chand and his team kept working to enlarge it, eventually bringing the total area to nearly 30 acres, or 12 hectares.

Chand used repurposed bicycle frames or other metal armatures to support a layer of concrete to make each of his thousands of animal and human sculptures. The figurines were then embellished with broken pieces of glass, bottle caps, porcelain, and ceramics, or any other kind of waste material that added texture. Their faces resemble masks, and they have stiff postures. Chand positioned the figures in tidy groups throughout the yard, giving them the appearance of frozen armies. Along with these architectural elements, the garden also has a stone amphitheater, plazas, courtyards, archways, and a big set of swings that are supposed to be utilized by guests. The lush, intricate landscape features cascading streams and waterfalls.

The garden of Chand became a national treasure. His accomplishments include receiving the Grand Medal of Vermeil from the city of Paris in 1980, having the garden featured on an Indian postage stamp in 1983, and receiving India’s Padma Shri award (1984), one of the country’s highest civilian honors, for meritorious achievement in the arts the following year. Chand continued to be the focus of exhibitions in both Europe and the US. Chand was also commissioned to design gardens elsewhere, most notably the Fantasy Garden at the National Children’s Museum in Washington, D.C. (dismantled in 2004).