‘BEAUTY SURROUNDS US’
Lee Foote, director of the University of Alberta Botanic Garden, pauses Wednesday at “the heart of the lettuce” at the new Aga Khan Garden, a vista of soft grey limestone and granite, cascading water, green lawns and colourful blossoms.
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 which 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 rosywhite 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
“We’re at the heart of the lettuce,” Foote says. “This is the centre of the bull’s-eye.”
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 — cherry and apple and pear and plum — the pond is home to ducks and geese and coots. 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.
“There’s not a set script.” The $25-million garden was a gift to the U of A, and to Alberta, from His Royal Highness 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 Islamic garden in the world, and the largest in North America.
“There is no such thing as a typical Islamic garden,” says Foote. “They each conform to their own environs.”
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
The perennials and annuals, the rose bushes and saplings, have just been put in place. 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, like curvilinear Arabic calligraphy, like traditional Persian paisleyshapes.
“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-multimulti-generational garden. Our great-great-great-grandchildren will be enjoying this garden.”
And don’t think the garden loses its ecstasy in winter. It’s quiet, but the roots are down there riotous. — Rumi
The Aga Khan garden is just part of the site’s total makeover. Formerly the Devonian Botanic Garden, the park, located on Highway 60 between Enoch and Devon, will welcome visitors when it opens this Friday with $13 million in other renovations. There’s a new entry plaza. New parking lots. A new sewage
treatment system. Wi-Fi. A new shuttle service for people with mobility issues.
That’s handy. Thanks to the grace and grandeur of the Aga Khan’s gift, I suspect attendance at University of Alberta Botanic Garden is about to blossom. We can’t all be invited to the Aga Khan’s island. We can, though, visit the little piece of paradise he’s given us.