Tour of Persian Gardens


The Cultural Landscape Association (CLA) is a non-profit organization specialized in the area of Cultural Landscape and the only institution in Iran that focuses on cultural landscapes interdisciplinary. The Association’s mission is to strengthen the role of cultural landscape in sustainable development in Iran and the Middle East region, by building the capacity of all those professionals and bodies involved with cultural landscape recognition, protection, conservation and management in the region, through training, research, the dissemination of information and network building.

The members of the association are academicians, experts, and ex. managers from different disciplines who work on research projects with the collaboration of internal and external institutions. In addition to research projects, CLA also holds conferences, meetings, and specialized tours.

Now, after our very successful international tours and on-site workshops “Taste Paradise” in May 2013, “Landscape Transformation” in May 2015, and “Taste Persian Cultural Landscape & Architecture” in November 2018, The Cultural Landscape Association (CLA) is planning to orchestrate another on-site workshop and journey (Taste Paradise II) for experts and professionals all around the globe, to visit and enjoy the cultural beauty of Persian Gardens on 27 Apr.-04 May 2019. It is a good opportunity for whom want to taste Iranian culture and history. In order to raise its quality, these workshops are only available to a limited number of people (20 participants for each tour) at the time, so it would be better if applicants register earlier not to lose the chance.

For more information, please  see the tour webpage:  http://classociation.org/upcoming/  or contact :info@classociation.org or       classociation1@gmail.com

Mohammad Motallebi

Interim President – IFLA Middle East

CEO city & Landscape Group

 

James Veitch and Sons nurserymen and garden designers

Veitch’s Chelsea nursery ceased trading in 1914, rather appropriately for the greatest horticultural firm in British history. It was founded in the eighteenth century  and in the nineteenth century took advantage of peace, prosperity and sea power to engage in plant collecting on a world scale.  It brought 1281 new plants into cultivation and undertook significant design projects including Killerton and Ascott. Sir Harry Veitch played a key role in moving the RHS Flower Show to Chelsea.

A royal visit to the Chelsea Flower Show

There is much to be said for the involvement of horticultural firms in garden design providing they have the good sense to work with talented and independent-minded garden designers. There is a risk of ‘in-house’ designers being over-influenced by technical and business managers with insufficient design judgement for the work in hand. As Winston Churchill remarked, experts should be on tap but not on tap. What they bring to garden design is a focus on high quality planting and construction: very necessary but of limited value when deployed to make a mediocre design.

Veitch & Sons Nursery Cataogue

Veitch & Sons Nursery Cataogue

Gardens of the Château de Vullierens

The gardens of Chateau Vullieren

The gardens of Chateau Vullierens have been influenced by the styles of several periods in garden history: Medieval, Baroque, Romantic and Modern

We are pleased to welcome the gardens of the Château de Vullierens to the Gardenvisit guide. Just inland from Lac Lemen (Lake Geneva) it looks south to the Alps and Mont Blanc. Four important styles of garden design have influenced the layout. When first built, as a strongly fortified house, it was set in a classic medieval walled enclosure. One can speculate that as with many medieval gardens, it was used for growing sweet smelling and medicinal herbs. Perhaps it had a turf seat and a rose bower in which the ladies of the house could enjoy the sun, do their embroidery and listen to minstrels.
When rebuilt, as a baroque style ‘Little Versailles’ the old uses are likely to have continued. The ladies and gentlemen of the house will have walked with family and guests on the elegant terrace, stopping to enjoy the sun and watch their children and pets play on the grass. In the nineteenth century, again following Europe-wide fashions, the gardens will have taken on more of a horticultural flavour and, to use English terms,  in a gardenesque and mixed styles.  In the mid-twentieth century Doreen Bovet, the owner’s American wife, began the fabulous iris collection.

Stupas, conservation, heritage, historic gardens in Ladakh


Heritage conservation is founded on a modernist view of the supremacy of reason and science over faith, religion and belief.

The foundations of these stupas were probably damaged by flood water before the roadway was built. Should conservation work be undertaken?

This leads to the conservation policy of detaching objects from their cultural contexts and freezing them in time. If the culture that produced the object has died, this may be justifiable. But a different policy is surely necessary when, as with Buddhism in Ladakh, the culture is alive.
Stupas are a case in point. They were made for religious reasons, to symbolise man’s place in space-time and the universe.

Stupa heritage conservation? Note the damage from vibrations or collisions

Building a stupa yields merit. Maintaining a stupa yields merit. Going clockwise around a stupa yields merit. Yet seeing a stupa decay is also instructive, as an illustration of impermanence, of anicca. With his last words, the Buddha reminded his followers that ‘All created things are impermanent’. So good actions are more important than any material or worldly goods. Similar considerations apply to the conservation of historic gardens, and much else.
Denis Byrne writes that ‘the life of a stupa is one of disintegration and accumulation’. I agree, and I also believe ‘that the life of a garden is one of disintegration and accumulation’. Only a few gardens and a few stupas should be managed like museum exhibits. Some stupas do memorialise the lives of holy men, but none were conceived as ‘sleeping places’ for the dead, which is the origin of the word ‘cemetery’. The Buddha was cremated and his ashes were scattered by dividing them among his followers.

Roadside stupa in Ladakh: is it good that so many people see the stupa? Or is it bad that the trucks damage stupas?

See also: Landscape Architects Association blog post on the design layout of stupa fields

Monty Don on the ‘Paradise Gardens’ of Islam

Monty Don is my favourite TV garden presenter but watching his BBC2 series on “””Paradise Gardens”””” has been a mixed pleasure. He has the talents to be a good garden historian. But he does not have the time. So the BBC should involve more experts. On Islamic gardens (as they are often, if misleadingly called) the best source of reference is Islamic Gardens and Landscapes by D. Fairchild Ruggles. She argues, convincingly, that before the sixteenth century the gardens Monty Don has visited (at speed) were NOT conceived as Paradise Gardens. The concept of paradise was found in the Qur’an but was not applied to real world gardens until tomb gardens came to be made in Mughal India. Retrofitting the paradise concept to earlier gardens is a flight of fancy of a kind the BBC should spurn. It makes no more sense than would a discussion of motor vehicles in eighteenth century gardens or in Roman gardens.

Monty is stronger on the planting of Islamic Gardens and it was a pleasure to hear him draw attention to the British planting of the Taj Mahal Garden  and Humayun’s Tomb Garden. He, or his research assistants, had the good sense to consult local experts. A British viceroy did his disappointing best to convert the Taj Mahal garden to the Gardenesque Style of  Victorian England. ‘George Nathaniel Viscount Curzon was really a very superior person’.

RSPB Lodge Sandy Wildlife Garden

Garden Finder entry for RSBP Lodge Garden


I don’t miss the Lodge Garden of the 1870s – because there is no reason to think its quality was exceptional. Nor do I miss the Lodge Garden of the 1930s, partly for the same reason and partly because the National Trust has made so many ‘improved Arts and Crafts’ gardens.

The RSBP Lodge bulding, near Sandy, was designed by Henry Clutton (above) for Arthur Wellesley Peel (below)

Photographers are able to find angles which make the Lodge Garden look National Trusty, which is the right thing to do near the house. But by taking a close look one can see that the RSBP has begun work on something more innovatory and more important. It is using its technical expertise to make a wildlife garden. There is every reason for the RSPB to know more about this and to do it an way that can be an inspiration to both amateur and professional gardeners. My suggestion is for the RSPB to make a garden that is beautiful, as well being habitat-rich. My video was taken in 2009 and I am sorry to criticise such a worthwhile effort. The Lodge Garden looks as though a group of conservation volunteers from a sixth-form college had been invited to have a bash at making a wildlife garden. There should now be a concentration on design quality.

Garden birds have been popular at least since the gardens of ancient China and ancient Rome

London has 13.2% of the UK’s population and the area of private gardens  in London  37,900 hectares. Gardens tend to be larger outside London so land devoted to gardens in the UK could be 300,000 ha. Comparing this with the area of the National Nature Reserves in the UK (94,400 hectares) it is obvious that the RSPB could do a lot for the UK’s bird population by creating a first class example of an Ornithological Garden for the Lodge. Birds were highly valued in ancient Chinese and Roman gardens.