Gardening: An Islamic Philosophical Architecture...

If heaven, the ultimate reward that we are striving for, is described as “gardens underneath which rivers flow”, then what places on Earth could give us better foretaste of Paradise than gardens? Gardens, and specifically traditional Islamic gardens, are the reflections of heaven on Earth. But they are also much more: they are the places where our minds can rest and our souls can reconnect with nature; they are the places of respite in the cooling shadow of trees and representations of ultimate timeless beauty. They provide nutrition for our souls, but on a more basic level, gardens also provide us with fruit and vegetables to feed our bodies. Gardens have profound meaning in Islam on both symbolic...