Mughal gardens were built in the Persian style of architecture and featured elements like pools, fountains, and canals. Some key Mughal gardens discussed are: 1) Ram Bagh, the oldest in India built by Babur, divided by pathways and canals to represent paradise with flowing rivers. 2) Dholpur Lotus Garden founded by Babur, with central terraces, water channels, and pools cut into bedrock. 3) Shalimar Bagh built by Jahangir for his wife, with three terraces and the Shah Nahar main water channel running through. 4) Humayun's Tomb garden was the first in India

1. MUGHAL GARDENS
BY:DIPEKSHA PATELIA

2. INTRODUCTION
➢Mughal gardens are a group of gardensbuilt by the Mughals in
the Persian style of architecture. This style was heavily influenced by
the Persian gardens particularly the Charbagh structure. Some of the typical
features include pools, fountains and canals inside the gardens
➢Islamic garden as “a hortus conclusus
walled off and protected from the
outside world; within, its design was
rigidly formal, and its inner space was
filled with those elements that man
finds most pleasing in nature. Its
essential features included running
water (perhaps the most important
element) and a pool to reflect the
beauties of sky and garden; trees of
various sorts, some to provide shade
merely, and others to produce fruits;
flowers, colorful and sweet-smelling;
grass, usually growing wild under the
trees; birds to fill the garden with song;
the whole cooled by a pleasant breeze.

3. RAM BAGH
.
➢The Ram Bagh is the oldest Mughal Garden in India, originally built by the Mughal Emperor
Babur in 1528, located about five kilometers northeast of the Taj Mahal in Agra, India. Babur was
temporarily buried there before being interred in Kabul.
➢The garden is a Persian garden, where pathways and canals divide the garden to represent the
Islamic ideal of paradise, an abundant garden through which rivers flow. The ram Bagh provides an
example of a variant of the charbagh in which water cascades down three terraces in a sequence of
cascades. Two viewing pavilions face the Jumna river and incorporates a subterranean 'tahkhana'
which was used during the hot summers to provide relief for visitors. The garden has numerous water
courses and fountains.
➢The name is a corruption of the Persian ram Bagh meaning 'Garden of Rest'. It is also variously
known as Bagh-i Nur Afshan 'Light-Scattering Garden', Aalsi Bagh or 'Lazy Garden': according to
legend, Emperor Akbar proposed to his third wife, who was a gardener there, by lying idle for 6 days
until she agreed to marry him.

4. Dholpur Lotus Garden
➢The garden was founded in 1978 and excavation began.This has revealed a central terrace, water
channels and a large pool. Dholpur was established by Babur as an encampment garden .The
permanent features are the pools and water features cut into the bedrock.
➢Water Chute from Timurid pavilion to rock-cut pool. he used the private apartments in his Indian
gardens as a retreat; space was assigned to his officers and companions in the surrounding" encampment.
➢In Hindustan, architectural solutions were required for
this expanded use of gardens and for the new climatic and
physical conditions. The solution was an aesthetic
response characteristic of Babur — he formalized the
arrangement of elements in traditional Timurid gardens.
The principle of organization he introduced in the Lotus
Garden Palace was a sequence of separate buildings and
open intervening spaces forming a unified composition
on a single stone platform. Unity was achieved by the
balance of space and mass and a narrow watercourse
which also directed movement. This differs not only from
previous Timurid architectural arrangements, but from
the prevailing design of North Indian palaces where
multiple stories of intercommunicating small rooms were
enclosed in a large, defensive structure.

5. Shalimar Bagh
➢the Emperor Jahangir built his celebrated Shalimar Bagh, his dream project to please his queen. He
enlarged the ancient garden in 1619 into a royal garden and called it 'Farah Baksh' ('the delightful'). He
built it for his wife Nur Jahan ('light of the world'). In 1630, under Emperor Shah Jahan’s orders, Zafar
Khan the governor of Kashmir got it extended. He named it ‘Faiz Baksh’ ('the bountiful'). It then became
a pleasure place for the Pathan and Sikh governors who followed Zafar Khan.
➢The layout of the garden is an adaptation of another Islamic garden layout known as the Persian gardens.
This garden built on a flat land on a square plan with four radiating arms from a central location as the water
source. It needed to be modified to suit the hilly terrain and availability of a well, which could be diverted
from a higher elevation to the planned gardens. Modifications involved the main channel running through
the garden axially from top to the lowest point. This central channel, known as the Shah Nahar, is the main
axis of the garden. It runs through three terraces. This layout left out the radial arms and the shape became
rectangular, instead of a square plan of the Chahar Bagh.

6. ➢The Shalimar Bagh is well known for chini khanas, or arched niches, behind garden waterfalls. They are
a unique feature in the Bagh. These niches were lighted at night with oil lamps, which gave a fairy tale
appearance to the water falls. However, now the niches hold pots of flower pots that reflect their colours
behind the cascading water.
➢The garden, as finally laid out, covers an area of 12.4 hectares built with a size of 587 metres length on the
main axis channel and with a total width of 251 metres . The garden has three terraces fitted with fountains
and with chinar tree-lined vistas. The Shahnahar is the main feeder channel to all the terraces. Each one of
the three terraces has a specific role.
➢The garden was linked to the open Dal Lake water through a canal of about 1 mile length and 12 yards in
width that ran through swampy quagmire. Willow groves and rice terraces fringed the lake edge. Broad
green paths bordered the lake with rows of chinar trees. The garden was laid in trellised walkways lined by
avenues of aspen trees planted at 2 feet) interval.

7. ➢Humayun's Tomb was the first garden tomb made in India. The garden is divided into 36 squares
by a grid of water channels and paths. The square garden is surrounded by a high rubble wall divided
initially into four large squares separated by causeways and channels, each square divided again into
smaller squares by pathways creating a char bagh. The laying down of the gardens in the Persian style
was introduced by Babur and continued till the period of Shah Jahan.
HUMAYUN TOMB GARDEN
➢The gardens are laid out in classical chahâr-bâgh pattern. They are divided into quarters by
raised causeways. The quadrants are divided, in turn, into eight plots, each with walkways. At
the intersection of these walkways are octagonal or rectangular pools.