The brief was to create an Eco-tourism resort with Permaculture principles. The site is situated next to the Bajana creek and the ecology of this place can be described as saline and arid scrubland. The adjacent wetland and concomitant ground water table is high (≈5’ deep) and is brackish (≈2700TDS). The land around the site is severely degraded, salinised, overgrazed and taken over by prosopis. The land is low, relatively flat, has low permeability and prone to water logging in the monsoon.
The strategy was to create conditions for inhabitation of the site - i.e. to create shade, a microclimate and to generate an ecology. For this, we developed a series of edge conditions and planned for a dense native wild plantation to create the desired ‘ecological niches’, where a diversity of life forms can thrive, while also creating desirable vistas across the landscape for the guests. Hardy, native and salt tolerant species and a suite of adapted halophytes and lesser known edible fruits that would survive here are selected for planting. The design strategy was to undulate the topography by cutting and mounding it so as to create ‘mosaics’ of grasslands and ephemeral wetlands and forested areas.
The wetlands are used to pool and push down rain water from the plot into the upper aquifer, thereby improving the quality of the water, and to generate and sustain an ecology in and around the site. It is recommended to create groves of trees for shade and fruit on the mounded areas, which is also where the units would be located.