The Gracious Garden

Inspired by the intricate gardens and geometry of Isfahan carpets, this work imagines a Persian courtyard as both a real place and a place held in memory.

At its centre, the Shamseh becomes a pool, the heart of the garden. Its blue centre suggests clear water and the colour of glazed tiles beneath the surface. Around it, jewel-like reds become pots of flowers, while golden blossoms spread through the courtyard, glowing almost like fragments of memory.

The small architectural forms surrounding the garden suggest houses gathered closely around a shared space. I imagine windows filled with coloured glass, doors opening onto the courtyard, and rooms belonging to different generations of the same family. Beyond them are walls, and beyond the walls, flowers continue to grow, as if life and memory cannot be contained by any boundary.

For me, this garden is deeply connected to what I miss about Iran. I do not only long for a landscape or a particular house. I long for a way of living,  for homes where lives unfolded together, where generations occupied the same space, where children, parents and grandparents moved through one another’s days. A courtyard was never simply an empty centre. It held voices, meals, arguments, celebrations, afternoon tea, the sound of water, the scent of flowers, and the quiet rituals of ordinary life.

There is something beautiful to me about imagining how many lives a house can remember. One generation leaves and another arrives, yet traces remain: a tree planted by someone long gone, a favourite place beside the pool, a window opened every morning, stories repeated until nobody quite remembers who first told them.

In this garden, the flowers are golden because memory has changed them. They are no longer ordinary flowers; they carry affection, absence and the glow that things sometimes acquire when they are far away. I imagine walking through them, sitting beside the pool and placing my feet in the cool, clear water, looking down at colourful tiles beneath the surface. Around me, light passes through stained-glass windows and scatters colour into the rooms.

It is an imagined place, but the longing within it is real.

The work is about the home I miss, not one exact building or one exact moment, but a whole world of shared lives, familiar beauty and belonging. A home built from memories inherited from others, memories of my own, and perhaps even memories of things I never personally lived but somehow still feel connected to.

It is a garden where generations remain present, and where everything I miss has been allowed to grow again.