$25-million Aga Khan Garden reaches halfway point
ED M O N TO N Construction of the multimillion-dollar Islamic-inspired garden at the University of Alberta Botanic Garden has officially reached the halfway point. I toured the site recently to get a feel for the project that’s being funded by a $25-million donation from the Aga Khan, the hereditary Imam or spiritual leader of the Shia Ismaili Muslims.
Initial design work on the Aga Khan Garden began six years ago, followed by early stages of construction starting on the grounds of the former Devonian Botanic Gardens in the summer of 2016.
When the 13-acre project is open for the Aga Khan’s diamond jubilee celebrations in July 2018, it will become the new centrepiece of the 240-acre gardens about 30 minutes from the heart of Edmonton.
MASONRY MASTERPIECE
One of the key features of the garden — which will be the largest of its type in North America — will be the stonework built by up to 30 stonemasons from the Edmonton company Scorpio Masonry, working in three separate crews to bring the site to life.
The particular stones used in the construction — Algonquin limestone from Ontario and granite from Quebec and the Rocky Mountain region in the U.S. — were chosen to create a distinctive geometric mineral border for the garden, while the plants will add a flourish of paint strokes of seasonal colours, said Nathan Foley, project manager for U.S.-based landscape design firm Nelson Byrd Woltz.
Forming the foundation is some 23,000 cubic metres of locally sourced sand.
THE LIFE OF PLANTS
Having increased the size of its greenhouse by 20 per cent to enable all the regional plants to be propagated locally, the university will also use the new garden as a research project.
The garden already has a 30-year database of plants and what happens to the flora in the Islamic garden will join that catalogue.
“The chronicling of the failures will be every bit as important as the successes,” said garden director Lee Foote.
Around 20,000-plus perennials, annuals and ground cover plants, 10,000 wetland plants, 3,000 shrubs and more than 500 trees will populate the site.
Foote said a research program will look at wetland-plant propagation that may help restoration projects around the province.
THE CENTREPIECE
At the heart of the Mughal-style garden, which is about the size of six Canadian Football League fields, is the chahar bagh, a central courtyard divided by walkways into four grassed areas surrounded by those native plants.
Encircling that highly formalized garden and a less formal area featuring fruit trees and a large lake, will be a wall of trees that will essentially create a garden within a forest.
Foley said they took Islamic design elements from across the centuries to create a “21st Century Islamic garden that felt at home in Edmonton.”
"( We took) cues from the past and interpreted it with materials and plant life and technologies of today,” he said.
Foote said he expects attendance to increase to about 160,000 people from between 60,000 to 70,000 annually within the first two years.