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The words "garden" and "paradise" are related by more than just having similar definitions. Both mean a piece of ground, often enclosed or walled, where fruit, flowers, herbs or vegetables can be grown. The word paradise has its root in the ancient Persian pairi-daeza, meaning "a place walled in, a park, a pleasure ground". Formal gardens have a long history , from the gardens of the pharaohs in Egypt to today's neat suburban gardens and urban allotments and rooftop gardens. They are places of refuge, where one can go for solitude, peace and quiet, for thought. Nature, which in its wild state is unpredictable and dangerous, is tamed and domesticated and made to serve man. Trade and military conquest carried the cultural development of the Egyptian garden to Persia, where emperors built private pleasure gardens full of shade and water, large enclosed game reserves and terraced parksplanted with trees and shrubs. In Egypt, to begin with, gardens in private homes and villas were mostly used for growing vegetables and located close to a canal or the river, later, however, they were often surrounded by walls and their purpose incorporated pleasure and beauty besides utility. This, of course, was for the rich. The poor, meanwhile, kept a patch for growing vegetables, rather like today's allotments. But central Persia is largely hot and dry and it is water that makes such gardens possible. Therefore they came up with a brilliantly engineered system of aqueducts which brought melted snow down to the central plains from the mountains in the north-east for irrigation. In fact, water became the essence of the Persian garden. A rich variety of species thrived while thin channels delivered water throughout the garden, feeding fountains and pools and cooling the atmosphere.
