142 GARDENS OF THE PLAINS LAHORE 



In Mughal garden - designs the fact of the 

 irrigation was never lost sight of, for it governs 

 every detail in the garden. The paths are 

 always raised, and the flower-beds sunk, even 

 when they are continuous parterres let into the 

 paths themselves. The garden squares are gener- 

 ally two or three feet lower still, and their flower- 

 beds were planted in a correspondingly bolder 

 way, with rose bushes, fruit trees, and tall-growing 

 flowers and herbs. The large fountain basins and 

 tanks were designed in the same fashion, their 

 corners and sides being ornamented with scrolls 

 of sculptured stone or marble. Broadly speaking, 

 a Mughal garden is always a sunk garden, no 

 matter how high or how numerous its terraces 

 may be. 



The canals in the upper and lower terrace of 

 the Lahore Shalimar Bagh are wide, about 

 twenty feet across, and they each have their line 

 of little fountains. There are broad pathways on 

 either hand paved with narrow bricks arranged 

 in herring-bone and various other patterns. In 

 the Punjab, where the land is formed from 

 the silt of the five great river-beds, stone is 

 not easily procurable, so brick-work and tiles are 

 largely used to replace the stone and marble of 



