Paradise Gardens

The garden is a symbol for paradise, imagined as a continuation of life on earth. The beauty of the garden is held to be a reflection of creation. Four main rivers of paradise are one of water, one of milk, one of wine and one of purified honey. With fruit-bearing trees, and flowers selected for their fragrance, water as elements and birds engaged in singing ritual prayer.

The origin of quartered gardens, known in Persian as the Chahar Bagh, starts with central pavilions  sited at the intersection of four avenues. The pavilion provides an outward movement along the avenues and inward motion through its four porches to the basin of water and the fountains. With fountains as its spiritual center, the centrifugal type of garden is capable of providing contact with nature so valued by its inhabitants, therefore, this urban dwellings surrounding an internal courtyard became the prototype for architectural forms. These gardens symbolize the harmony between the four elements - sky, earth, water and plants.

The essential plan of a paradise garden is a four-fold layout with a pond or fountain in the centre. Planted with all season fruit trees: red jewel apples, sourwood trees, dogwood, birch and oaks providing food for birds and wildlife. Oranges, pomegranates, olives, fig and date trees were symbolically important also, as passers were able to pluck fruits from sidewalks.

Beautiful red-fruited and white-flowered crabapple tree offers year around interest in the landscape; sourwood midsummer flowers are highly fragrant and the delicious honey that bees produce from the blossoms are considered to be unmatched by any other honey; the attractive dogwood berries feed song birds and small wildlife for winter; while an ornamental tree, hummingbirds drink River Birch tree saps and birds eat its seeds, deer eat its twigs; now add sweet live oak acorns to the top of food lists for deer and quail and jay. Peace.