The garden houses of Iran

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Zahrah Nasir

There is a tendency to imagine traditional Persian gardens as large expanses of perfectly manicured plantings and elegant water features attached to magnificent palaces/stately homes, staffed by legions of gardeners to keep all and everything 'just so'.

This stereotypical picture has though, only ever related to a tiny percentage of Persian gardens in the country which has long been known as Iran and where, along with every other country on the planet, the number of 'ordinary' people far exceeds the number of those able to afford the luxury of owning vast tracts of land, let alone building 'palaces' and spending absolute fortunes in laying out the gardens of their dreams.

And it is to the glorious – often incredibly 'inventive' – gardens of the huge Iranian 'middle-class' to which we, here in neighboring Pakistan, should look, and learn from, as we go through the unpredictable process of climate change: A change that, according to various scientific sources, will cause temperatures to rise like never before, turning our gardening habits upside down in the process.

Let's face it and accept the truth of the climate change matter: Pakistan currently ranks 7th on the list of countries to be adversely affected by climate change and – if we open our eyes and look round us – it is clearly evident that our changing climate has already had a drastic effect on planting times, crop suitability and harvesting results, the latter on an annually decreasing, very slippery slope indeed.

The art of gardening has always been an integral part of the Persian/Iranian psyche, yet it wasn't until the early 18th century that the 'middle-class' was able to get to grips with a highly personalized garden concept designed to meet the specific needs of urban dwellers, living in limited amounts of space on often highly restricted budgets.

What emerged were 'The Garden Houses of Iran' in which, for all except the very coldest part of winter, there was no actual dividing line between house and garden: The whole was one.

There are, naturally, many parallels to be drawn between Iran and Pakistan but, unfortunately (although this just may finally be changing), the melding together of home and garden is rarely one of them which, for the section of society having both of these, is an outright shame.

The basic architecture of a an Iranian 'town house' in the 18th,19th and early 20th centuries , irrespective of its size and number of stories, hinged on creating peace and tranquility for its inhabitants, protecting them – and their privacy – from the outside world whilst retaining every measure of climatic suitability possible: the latter point being one of divergence between Iranian and our own architectural trends which veered towards climatically unsuitable colonialist 'copies' .

In Iran - blisteringly hot and dry in summer, with bitterly cold winters, designing homes to meet all of the aforementioned requirements, took a great deal of skill combined with a huge helping of artistic imagination.

From outside in the street, a passerby saw nothing other than a bank wall with a single door, or a row of walls, each one with a door, if – as it often was – it was a row of houses without any open spaces between them.

It was/is only on being permitted entrance through one of these doors that magic happened/s.  

Leaving the outside world behind, one steps into a small courtyard or traditional 'Hashti', often with a tiled floor, mosaic tiled walls and, if there is space, perhaps a grapevine growing in a large terracotta pot, its main stem trained up and over a roof trellis to provide shade in summer yet allow, after leaf fall, warm sunlight to enter over the winter months. A short passage way or 'Dalan-e-vorudi' - it may be open roofed with flowering creepers, such as roses or jasmine, trained into seasonal screens or have a roof that is the floor of a room above it - leads onwards from here: There may also be doors into small rooms on either side of the passage, these rooms being used to entertain people, perhaps work related friends, who are not known well enough to be admitted to the very private family sanctum ahead.

This passage leads, in turn, into the inner courtyard which is the soul of the family home and where, for most of the year, the family meets, eats, relaxes and may even sleep.

Adhering to traditional Persian garden design – although in miniature – water, light and plants are brought together in a beguiling balance of nature and man-made: The pivotal point is a round or rectangular pond, with or without a fountain, from which emerge four, equidistant water channels dividing the garden into quadrants, each quadrant primarily dedicated to one particular species – apricots, pomegranates, figs, grapes being prime examples which, depending on the chosen overall style, were under-planted either with formal rows of flowers and vegetables or filled with wild flowers left to do their own thing. The water channels doubled for irrigation use.

Interestingly, trees were/are not planted on level ground or on the 'raised beds' which have become so popular in the western world: Instead, trees were/are planted in ditches so that water use in minimized and root uptake of water maximized – as the bottom of the ditches remain in shade for much of the day, evaporation is reduced too.

Trees and flowering/fruiting vines, the latter trained up/over trellises, archways, walkways and pavilions, provide essential summer shade, plus, assist in maintaining the gardens micro-climate initially formed by the erection of the house and protective, privacy creating, walls.

This micro-climate is further 'fed', during the dry heat of summer, via wind-catchers: Traditional Persian wind-catchers, erected on top of houses, are incredibly efficient at channeling even the slightest breeze down through each level of habitation, lowering the temperature as they go and finally, via open doors/windows/screens, exiting out to lower temperatures in the enclosed garden as well. Similar wind-catchers were once common in parts of rural Punjab and Sindh and would certainly prove their worth if reintroduced.

Iranian garden houses reached the height of popularity in the late 19th century, were relegated to a back-burner when, during the mid-20th century, migration from rural to rapidly expanding urban centers, hastily constructed without environmentally sustainable planning, suddenly became the 'norm' but, thankfully, in recent years, the Iranian people – and their government – have woken up to the indisputable fact that garden houses are, in more ways than one, a blessing.

As a result, surviving, historically important, garden houses throughout the country, are currently being restored and brand-new ones, even more innovative than those before them, are coming up all over that forward thinking country and in both rural and urban areas alike.

Here in Pakistan where climate change is already hitting hard – think of the last few summers and their debilitating heat waves with even harsher ones forecast to come – and it is fairly obvious that our architectural trends need to change.

It is imperative that homes, of all kinds, and all other new buildings too, are constructed with climatic sustainability and sensible use of space, indoor and out, factored in: True to say that a handful of mega-projects are being built within a 'green' framework, but the need is for the construction of affordable, individual homes to follow suit.

Turning the clock back to more traditional Pakistani high ceiling rooms ,with windows and wind catchers strategically located to channel even the slightest breeze and, following Iranian lead, amalgamating sustainable 'Garden House' artistry in, the general population would then have a chance of adjusting to a changed climate – with all that means – from the comfort of their own homes instead of from the airless 'boxes' and other such concrete monstrosities they struggle to survive in right now.