‘NO PERSON LEAVES UNCHANGED’: AGA KHAN’S GIFT WILL LAST GENERATIONS
Beauty surrounds us, but usually we need to be walking in a garden to know it. — Rumi, 13th-century Persian poet.
On a sunny Wednesday morning, Lee Foote, director of the University of Alberta Botanic Garden, is leading a tour of the Aga Khan Garden.
We walk along a raised path, winding through the spruce and jackpine and aspen wilderness to a long, black, granite reflecting pool that mirrors the sky and the trees above. Once, Foote jokes, this was a bog. Now, it’s been transformed into a woodland bagh (the Persian word for garden). Coming out of the shady forest, we’re met by a skyline of rosy-white Portuguese limestone towers, atop an imposing podium of granite and limestone. This is the Talar — the Persian word for “throne.”
From this imposing throne room, we look down on a tapestry of waterfalls, fountains, reflecting pools, and a series of formal gardens, all laid out along traditional Islamic geometric, rectilinear lines. There’s also a 250-seat outdoor Greco-Roman amphitheatre.
But this isn’t just an imported form imposed on the boreal forest. It’s not a kitschy fauxMuslim theme park. The garden embraces its northern Alberta topography and botany, redefining an ancient art form in a new setting.
My heart rushes into the garden, joyfully tasting all the delights. But reason frowns, disapproving of the heart’s bad manners. — Rumi
“This is the centre of the bull’seye,” Foote says.
It’s a vista of soft grey limestone and granite, cascading water, green lawns and colourful blossoms. The edge of the very manicured and formal gardens blurs and blends into a natural pond. Yes, it’s an authentic Alberta slough, tidied up a bit for company. Surrounded by a young orchard of 120 fruit trees. The native wetland contrasts sharply with imported Persian refinement. But the juxtaposition is magical.
“We have an unstated mandate here, that no person leaves unchanged,” says Foote.“Like good poetry, the best images of the garden evoke different things for different people.
The $25-million garden was a gift to the university, and to Alberta, from the Aga Khan, the hereditary Imam of the world’s Shia Ismaili Muslims. It’s part of a network of 11 traditional Islamic gardens the Aga Khan has built or restored around the globe. This is the most northerly one in the world, and the largest in North America.
The Aga Khan commissioned American landscape architect Thomas Woltz of Nelson Byrd Woltz to design the 4.8-hectare space, inspired by the great Mughal gardens of India and the Middle East. Such gardens, built in desert or other very hot climates, celebrated water. Here too, fountains and pools create humid microclimates, nurturing the plants around them.
Beauty is the garden scent of roses, murmuring water flowing gently ... Can words describe the indescribable? — Rumi
It won’t be until late July that everything is in full bloom. And it will take years before the garden grows into its full self. Foote acknowledges the garden looks a bit austere. Once the flower beds come into their own, he says, they’ll soften the sharp edges.
“As it matures, it will take on a totally different aura. This garden is still in its larval stage and it’s going to take a lot of time to mature.”
He’s willing to wait. “It’s built to last 600 years. This is a timeless, multi-multi-multi-generational garden.”
The Aga Khan garden is just part of the site’s total makeover. Formerly the Devonian Botanic Garden, the park will welcome visitors when it opens this Friday with $13 million in other renovations.