Karaj—a town west of Tehran—was heavily bombed one week into “Operation Epic Fury.” Few readers would know Karaj for any gardening significance or for the presence of Iranian Revolutionary Guard outposts—targets of the bombing. Yet an epic rock garden was begun near Karaj in the mid-1970s. Will Ingwersen, an English nurseryman, had been a consultant.

I was privileged to prick out seedlings and pot up alpines for three months in the summer of 1979 at the Ingwersen’s Birch Farm Nursery, located on the back of William Robinson’s Gravetye Estate in West Sussex. The Iranian Revolution coincided that year with the 50th anniversary of the nursery and the publication of Will Ingwersen’s Manual of Alpine Plants.

Will Ingwersen on the far right, his brother Paul is 2nd from left, 28-year-old Allen Bush is 5th from left, and the Birch Farm Nursery staff in 1979.

Ground-hugging alpine dionysias and saxifragas had been a brief obsession when I lived and gardened in England. I was introduced to a wide world of rock garden and alpine plants through the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, as well as from extraordinary displays from nurseries and enthusiasts at the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) flower shows at Vincent Square, 1978-1979.

Dionysia aretoides is an Iranian species of the Primulaceae family and a recipient of the Royal Horticultural Society’s Award of Garden Merit. Kew Science photo.

There to behold was a level of horticultural expertise I could never have imagined. Names like the Ingwersens, Joe Elliott, Jack Drake, Kate Dryden, and Tony Hall were glittering stars of my new galaxy. They grew littler plants, native to alpine mountains, plucked from cold frames and glass houses, and grown to perfection in shallow terra cotta bulb pans for RHS shows. They brought familiar woodland ephemerals like trilliums and lady slippers, too. I was pleased that the hot and humid Ohio Valley and southern Appalachians—my neck of the woods—were well represented.

Alpine plants were in a different class altogether 

I had never set foot anywhere close to these cute buns. (You won’t find buns like these in the bakery.) My world view expanded. These “high” enthusiasts got around. They loved their little plants. I enjoyed, hearing tales of adventurous explorers harvesting a few seeds from alpine plants growing on the rocky crevices of high peaks around the world. I was hooked.

Mr. Ingwersen invited me to his home one evening in late August before I returned to the U.S. in the late summer of 1979. He showed slides of a fantasy garden cut short.  I was mesmerized. Nothing had been mentioned of this for the three months prior, not even among the staff.

Pearl Palace. Wikimedia Commons photo.

The award-winning plantsman, and pipe-smoking raconteur, was asked in the mid-1970s, by the Shah’s half-sister, Fatemeh Pahlavi, to come to Iran and lay out a rock garden. (The Shah’s sister, Shams Pahlavi, owned an estate in Mehrshahr near Karaj that included the modernist Shams Palace, known as the Pearl Palace, designed in part by architects associated with the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation.)

A price was agreed upon 

Princess Fatemeh Pahlavi sent a private jet to London Gatwick to pick up Ingwersen.

The odd couple met at her royal retreat in the foothills of the Alborz (Elburz) mountains at the edge of the Tehran plain. Ingwersen asked what she had in mind. Princess Fatemeh said she was thinking about a 50-acre (20 hectare) rock garden. Ingwersen, whose modest jewel-box nursery consisted of less than an acre, was stunned. Such an enormous project would exceed – by far – the total acreage of the world’s largest and best rock gardens at Wisley, Kew, and Edinburgh in the United Kingdom, Nymphenburg in Munich, or the Denver Botanic Gardens in Colorado. (Ingwersen’s father, Walter, built the rock garden at Wisley while he was under house arrest during  the First World War—on the suspicion, because of Danish ancestry, that he might be sympathetic to the Germans.)

Princess Fatemeh Pahlavi in the 1970s

Ingwersen questioned the Shah’s half-sister to see if she had any idea what was required of her fantasy besides imperial hubris. He mentioned rocks: she pointed to the Alborz mountains. He said they would need to build roads: she assured him it would be done. He said he needed huge road building trucks to haul the rocks: she asked, how many? Money was no object. The garden was begun and might have been completed except for the Iranian revolution in 1979. The Shah’s family went into exile, and garden making took a back seat to Allah and authoritarian rule.

Years passed, and I occasionally wondered about the rock garden.

Harry Jans tipped me off at a 2014 plant conference in Grünberg, Germany. A friend had seen the rock garden.  John Mitchell clued me in. He is the Alpine Supervisor at the Edinburgh Botanic Garden in charge of their Rock Garden, Woodland Garden, and Alpine Area. I wondered how big the unfinished garden was. Mitchell responded “The garden was quite large, not sure about hectares,” and sent a photo

The rock garden in 2005. John Mitchell photo.

I vividly remember my August 1979 dinner with Mr. and Mrs. Ingwersen, and the slide show that followed. I was seduced by Will Ingweren’s twinkling eyes and photos. The crazy notion of a massive rock garden paradise of beautiful alpine, herbaceous, and woody plants from Iran and around the word didn’t seem so farfetched at the time. And apparently it was.

I could find no evidence of Princess Fatemeh Pahlavi’s rock garden online. I have only John Mitchell’s photo from 2005.

The future of the epic Iranian rock garden remains unclear as bombs fall nearby. But the citizenry is not giving up. Today (March 20, 2026) is the Persian New Year and Tehran’s gardens are being decorated with flowers.

I received an email a few days after this updated story was published

I had hoped there was someone  who could fill in historic gaps since the  March 20th publication. William Bessler stumbled across my recent Garden Rant story. The rock garden was far less than the 20 hectare/ 50 acre size that Mr. Ingwersen had mentioned. but still quite substantial. Perhaps Princess Fatemeh had bigger dreams. We may never know. I have edited my exchange with William Bessler for clarity and conciseness.

Bessler: By sheer coincidence I came across your website today while trying to gather information about the Ariamehr Botanical Garden near Karaj now known as the National Botanical Garden of Iran. There seems to be some confusion about Will Ingwersen’s involvement with any garden work at the Pearl Palace at Karaj.I was the landscape architect appointed in 1975 to prepare a new master plan for the Botanic garden. Will ingwersen had already started building the vast rock garden six months before my arrival under the auspices of our patroness Princess Fetemeh and Eskandar Firouz, minister of environment. I was able to work on site with Will Ingwersen for the remaining few weeks of his stay who taught me how to put rocks together. I was able to complete the project in his style and to plant the many alpine plants that were shipped from his nursery in the UK. The total area of the rock project with a waterfall was no more than 11,000 square meters (1.1 hectares/2.7 acres). I believe it was Princess Fatemeh who recommended Will Ingwersen and I’m sure if he had any involvement with Princess Shams, he would have mentioned it.

Bush: The patroness Princess Fetemeh and Eskandar Firouz, minister of environment—were behind the rock garden. Mr. Ingwersen mentioned that his nursery supplied plants for the rock garden, but his very small Birch Farm Nursery could not have supplied enough alpine plants for 11,000 sq. metres.

Who was behind the National Botanical Garden? How many hectares? What has happened to it?

Bessler: Let me put you further into the picture. First, there was no connection of Shams’s palace (Pearl Palace) at Karaj which is located near the centre of town. The National Botanic Garden (formally the Ariamehr Botanic Garden) consisting of 141.84 hectares (350 acres) is located on the north side of the Tehran/Karaj highway approximately 8 kms further west from the Mehr Abad airport. You can find it on Google. 

The project was inspired by the then minister for the Department of environment, Eskandar Firouz who persuaded the government to establish a botanical garden and herbarium for scientific research and to include horticultural education. The existing site was acquired and a prolific British writer by the name of Edward Hyams was invited in 1974 to come to propose a master plan. Hymes wrote about everything but notably a book on Botanical Gardens of the world and I assume this is why he was invited. Unfortunately, he was no designer and proposed a circle in the middle of the site with radiating paths to the outer edges rather like the spokes of a bicycle wheel. Firouz decided to employ a landscape architect and contacted Kew, and I was lucky to be recommended. I arrived in May 1975 and worked on the project until the last moment in December 1978 after the revolution began when we had to flee. In mid 1975, my first task was to prepare a new master plan for the garden and after many days of discussion with the botanist Per Wendelbo and others, I developed a sketch proposal which was approved at a meeting with Firouz and Princess Fatemeh in early 1976. Ingwersen’s rock garden and lake I included in the horticultural display section. 

Eskandar Firouz was a brilliant, far-sighted man but was fired by the shah in 1977 for criticizing his brother for hunting an endangered species of animal.  As you may know many of the shahs’ top men were executed by Khomeini, including the Prime Minister Amir-Abbas Hoveydah. Firouz’s life was spared simply for opposing the shah’s brother but was imprisoned for about 7 years, I think. During this time, he wrote several books on the wildlife of Iran and his autobiography. He died in 2020 aged 93.  

I have recently been helping someone connected to Kew with information who has written Firouz’s biography to be launched this July. 

On leaving Iran at the time of the revolution, I was unable to gather up much of my drawings and reports, but I do have a few somewhat faded drawings and sketches which I will try to copy you with this email. Unfortunately, I do not have a copy of the completed master plan but only the original sketch proposal which was approved. If you Google the National Botanical Garden of Iran you will see that the existing layout, in principle, almost follows my original design. 

William Bessler’s landscape design of National Botanical Garden of Iran. The rock garden and pond are in the middle left section.

…To follow up on my last email yesterday and to answer your questions which I failed to comment on. The rock garden is in the NBG of Iran and consists of Ingwersen’s initial input for the intended purposes of displaying alpine plants and ground cover shrubs. Over the course of the following years, I was able to supervise more rock work and water features to display marginal aquatic plants and herbaceous plants. All our original plant material came from Ingwersen’s nursery and  the woody plants came from Hilliers in Hampshire. As soon as plant material was shipped, it was potted up and tended in the temporary nursery where propagation began as soon as suitable material was mature enough. This was supervised by our horticulturist, George Cobham who had a huge task on his hands. Of course, one shipment from Will Ingwersen’s nursery was not enough to fill the entire rock area. It took several years to propagate enough, while the rock garden was continuing to expand. This work continued right up to the time of the revolution in Nov/Dec 1978. If you look at some of the recent photos posted on Google, the entire rock garden and waterfall is overgrown with massive trees and shrubs, and I doubt if many of Will’s precious and delicate alpine plants have survived. 

I hope Will Ingwersen’s rock garden and National Botanical Gardens of Iran survive the current war.

This is an update from the original 2012 Human Flower Project.