138 GARDENS OF THE PLAINS LAHORE 



garden on the Dal Lake, the first Shalimar Bagh 

 built under Nur-Jahan's direction. 



The Lahore garden, which is divided into three 

 terraces, is five hundred and twenty yards in length 

 and two hundred and thirty yards in breadth. 

 Formerly, there were outer gardens extending 

 much beyond these measurements. But as it 

 stands to-day the garden plan may be said to 

 consist of two char-baghs joined together by a 

 narrower terrace, the whole centre of which is 

 occupied by an immense raised tank. There are 

 pavilions on three sides, and in the centre is a 

 small chabutra reached by two stone causeways. 

 The scale of the tank is so large that it admits of 

 double paths and a flower parterre running all 

 round the water. 



The design of this parterre is given on the 

 opposite page. The pattern is based on a 

 succession of octagons and resembles the star 

 parterres of the Taj gardens. In both cases the 

 design was formerly filled in with flowers and 

 the oblong beds were also planted with two 

 small trees, such as an orange and a lemon 

 tree, with a cypress tree in each smaller bed. 

 This was the usual order, which was sometimes 

 reversed by planting the cypresses in pairs 



