Kuppanna Park Glass House (Nishad Bagh)

Kuppanna Park, also known as Nishad Bagh, is a 12-acre park in the Nazarbad area of Mysuru, a five-minute walk from the Mysore Palace, run by the Department of Horticulture. The park already hosted the Dasara flower shows when the department, having installed a musical fountain there, proposed adding a glass house to make the site more attractive, modelled on the Glass House in Bengaluru's Lalbagh.

Karnataka's Chief Minister, Siddaramaiah, set aside 6 crore rupees in the 2015-16 budget; 1.5 crore was released at first, and a special grant later topped up the funding. The foundation stone was laid on 22 January 2017. The work went to the Public Works Department (PWD) and the Bengaluru firm Nikitha Build-Tech; its cost, put at 7.23 crore in July 2017, was given as 7.45 crore by September 2018.

The project ran late. Expected for Dasara 2017, then for February or March 2018, the glass house was only ready for Dasara 2018, when the flower show of 10 to 19 October was scheduled inside it. In March 2022 the park, until then locked for most of the year and open for little more than forty days, over twelve of them for the flower show, was opened all year round for walking, photo shoots, filming and conferences, and the local MLA, Nagendra, announced a 5-crore development plan.

Designed on the model of the Lalbagh Glass House, the building is a circular structure 36 metres in diameter, described by the local press as Indo-Saracenic and 'Mysuru style'. It stands on a platform raised 1.5 metres above the ground, accessible to wheelchair users, and has four entrances; including its corridor, it covers 2,419 m². It is crowned by a dome 18 metres wide.

The steel frame weighs about 100 tonnes, and the structural glazing was entrusted to the firm Argo Facades. The panes, 13.5 mm Saint-Gobain solar-control toughened glass made of two 6 mm sheets joined by a 1.52 mm interlayer, were chosen for their low heat absorption, to keep the interior cool. Electrical and drainage networks run underground; the glass house is fitted with fans, exhaust systems and rainwater harvesting, and a solar power installation was planned.

The sources consulted describe no permanent collection: the glass house serves above all as a setting for flower shows. For the 2018 Dasara show, held from 10 to 19 October by the Mysuru district administration and the Department of Horticulture, the announced centrepiece was a floral replica of New Delhi's Lotus Temple, a Bahá'í house of worship dedicated in December 1986, made with thousands of roses, orchids and lotus flowers.

The programme also included terrarium gardens, with plants displayed in decorative glass containers, ornamental plants including several kinds of cacti, ikebana arrangements, and displays of Dutch roses, orchids, chrysanthemums, lilium, petunias, French marigolds, verbena, begonias, dahlias and vincas. The park also sells plants and bulbs of various sizes.

The glass house stands in Kuppanna Park in Nazarbad, near Hardinge Circle, now Jayachamarajendra Wadiyar Statue Circle, a five-minute walk from the Mysore Palace, so the two are easily combined. The high point of the year is the Dasara flower show, which runs for more than twelve days. The park also has a musical fountain that plays in the evening.

Since 2022 the park has been open all year to walkers, and it serves as a backdrop for wedding photo shoots and for film and television shoots; outside the festival season, a short visit is enough.