Ancient Urban Gardens of Persia: Concept, History, and Influence on Other World Gardens

Abstract

<jats:p>The history of Persian gardens goes back to a few millennia before the emergence of Islam in Iran (Persia). Designs of Persian gardens have influenced and are used extensively in the gardens of Al-Andalus in Spain, Humayun’s Tomb and the Taj Mahal in India, and many gardens in the United States and other countries around the globe. <jats:italic>Bagh</jats:italic> in the Persian language (Farsi) means garden and the word Baghdad (the capital city of Iraq) is rooted from the words <jats:italic>bagh</jats:italic> and <jats:italic>daad</jats:italic> (meaning “the garden of justice”). Pasargadae, the ancient Persian capital city, is the earliest example of Persian garden design known in human civilization as <jats:italic>chahar bagh</jats:italic> or 4-fold garden design. Bagh-e-Eram, or Garden of Eden or Eram Garden, is one the most attractive Persian gardens and is located in Shiraz, Iran. There are numerous other urban ancient gardens in Iran, including Bagh-e-Shahzadeh (Shazdeh), meaning “The Prince’s Garden” in Mahan, Golestan National Park near the Caspian Sea; Bagh-e-Fin in Kashan; Bagh-e-El-Goli in Tabriz; and Bagh-e-Golshan in Tabas. The design of each Persian garden is influenced by climate, art, beliefs, poetry, literature, and romance of the country and the region where the garden is located. In addition, each garden may have a gene bank of fruits, flowers, herbs, and vegetables. Although countless gardens were destroyed in the hands of invaders throughout the centuries, Persians have attempted either to rebuild or build new gardens generation after generation, each of which has become a favorite destination to tourists from around the world.</jats:p>

Socio-Cultural Appropriateness of the Use of Historic Persian Gardens for Modern Urban Edible Gardens

“…We surveyed six UNESCO registered gardens in Iran to assess the adaptability of them with the guidelines of designing the urban food garden, both functionality and attractiveness. While the attractiveness of Persian garden as a beautiful landscape which can prepare the cultural ecosystem services was previously well discussed [11,33,[108][109][110], the authors viewpoint of this paper to the garden aesthetics was focused on preparing a basement for implementing the public-involving strategy in development of urban agriculture [95], since aesthetic value often attract many citizens, creating additional benefits for food urbanism [95,111]. In this approach, the Persian garden is assessed to accommodate a diverse range of ecosystem services, both provisioning and cultural ecosystem services.…”

A Systematic Literature Review of Historic Garden Management and Its Economic Aspects

“…De Oliveira Paiva, de Brito Sousa, and Carcaud's (2020) review of tourism studies includes a wide range of work exploring the subject of garden tourism. The studies in their review that are indexed in Scopus provide several examples of garden tourism methodologies that can be fruitfully applied to historic gardens, including: on-site and frontier survey questionnaires and interviews to investigate garden owners [2], garden [83] or heritage [84,85] visitors and their experience; trip advisor review content analysis compared to the declared management objectives of botanical gardens [86]; modeling of the tourist attraction system [87]; historical reconstruction through site visits, interviews, bibliographic and iconographic research [88]; discussions of pertinent themes such as the geography of gardens [89,90], the history of Iranian ornamental horticulture and historic gardens [91,92], and the evolving role of botanical gardens [93][94][95]. Some of these research instruments are used in other studies in this historic garden management review, while some are new.…”

Flowers and gardens on the context and tourism potential

“…In Persian, garden means Pardis or paradise, and due to this meaning, some historic gardens were destroyed and rebuild, or new gardens have been built generation after generation, turning into important places for visiting around the world (Fallahi, 2017;Fallahi et al, 2019). Many other gardens were built influenced by classic and important styles, like the Persian garden and its Chahar bagh (= quadrilateral garden) concept (Fallahi et al, 2019) and many other different styles (Paiva, 2008).…”