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Beauty surrounds us, but usually we need to be walking in a garden to know it. Rumi, 13th century Persian poet.

On a sunny Wednesday morning, Lee Foote, director of the University of Alberta Botanic Garden, is leading a tour of the Aga Khan Garden.

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We walk along a raised path, winding through the spruce and jackpine and aspen wilderness to a long black granite reflecting pool which mirrors the sky and the trees above. Once, Foote jokes, this was a bog. Now, it’s been transformed into a woodland bagh — the Persian word for garden.

Photo by Larry Wong / POSTMEDIA NETWORK

Coming out of the shady forest, we’re met by a skyline of rosy-white Portuguese limestone towers, atop an imposing podium of granite and limestone. This is the Talar — the Persian word for “throne.”

From this imposing throne room, we look down on a tapestry of waterfalls, fountains, reflecting pools, and a series of formal gardens, all laid out along traditional Islamic geometric, rectilinear lines. There’s also a 250-seat outdoor Greco-Roman amphitheatre.