{"id":11022,"date":"2017-10-30T20:44:55","date_gmt":"2017-10-30T20:44:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/?p=11022"},"modified":"2017-10-31T13:45:33","modified_gmt":"2017-10-31T13:45:33","slug":"water-of-life-water-of-death-water-of-gardens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/water-of-life-water-of-death-water-of-gardens\/","title":{"rendered":"Water of Life, Water of Death, Water of Gardens"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"\" data-block=\"true\" data-editor=\"8kstm\" data-offset-key=\"32f45-0-0\">\n<div class=\"_1mf _1mj\" data-offset-key=\"32f45-0-0\">\n<div id=\"attachment_11023\" style=\"width: 635px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/varanasi_ganges_ganga.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-11023\" class=\"size-large wp-image-11023\" src=\"http:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/varanasi_ganges_ganga-1024x683.jpg\" alt=\"The Ganges is a sacred river, particularly where it flows flows north at Varanasi, enclosed on the west bank and open to a floodplain on the east bank\" width=\"625\" height=\"417\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/varanasi_ganges_ganga-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/varanasi_ganges_ganga-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/varanasi_ganges_ganga-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/varanasi_ganges_ganga-624x416.jpg 624w, https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/varanasi_ganges_ganga.jpg 1026w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 625px) 100vw, 625px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-11023\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Ganges is a sacred river, particularly where it flows flows north at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/gardens\/varanasi_waterside\">Varanassi<\/a>, enclosed on the west bank and open to a floodplain on the east bank<\/p><\/div>\n<p><span data-offset-key=\"32f45-0-0\"><span data-text=\"true\">Neil MacGregor&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/programmes\/b09bfn8y\">Living with the Gods episode on water<\/a> does not mention gardens, but it could have done!\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"_1mf _1mj\" data-offset-key=\"32f45-0-0\"><span data-offset-key=\"32f45-0-0\"><span data-text=\"true\">MacGregor starts by talking about water in Christianity and Islam before devoting most of the programme to India.\u00a0<\/span><\/span>What little is known about ancient Hindu gardens indicates they were flowery forests arranged around pools, which seem related to baolis, ghats and the pools in Buddhist monasteries.<\/div>\n<div class=\"_1mf _1mj\" data-offset-key=\"32f45-0-0\">In the modern world, I wish purity was more of a design objective for garden pools, as it is in Herbert Dreiseit&#8217;s <em>Waterscapes<\/em>.\u00a0Even the worst books on garden design stress the centrality of water. \u00a0Dr D G Hessayon <em>The Rock &amp; Water Garden Expert<\/em> 1993 is a good example of a bad book on garden design.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"\" data-block=\"true\" data-editor=\"8kstm\" data-offset-key=\"7nodi-0-0\"><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Neil MacGregor&#8217;s Living with the Gods episode on water does not mention gardens, but it could have done!\u00a0 MacGregor starts by talking about water in Christianity and Islam before devoting most of the programme to India.\u00a0What little is known about ancient Hindu gardens indicates they were flowery forests arranged around pools, which seem related to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[247],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11022"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11022"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11022\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11033,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11022\/revisions\/11033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}