Bring Your Camera: Iranian ‘Stone’ Garden Dazzles Visitors

Stone Garden is Iran’s most amazing garden visited by about 6,000 Iranian and foreign tourists every year.

Located near Bolourd District, Miyandoab Village, in southern Iran, the garden has tall, dry trees from which hang stones weighing 1 to 10 kilograms.

 (toiran.com Photo/ Shahin Kamali)

Who has created this astonishing garden? Why do the tree branches carry stones as heavy as 10 kilograms? These are questions posed by most tourists and passersby.

In an interview with Iran Daily in 2013, Hadi Iranmanesh, the head of Kerman Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Department, said a hearing-impaired and mute landowner in Sirjan named Darvish Khan Esfandiyarpour created this garden.

(toiran.com Photo/ Shahin Kamali)

According to Iranmanesh, the 2,500-square-meter garden lies 40 kilometers to the east of Sirjan on Sirjan-Baft Road.

“The Stone Garden was created between 1961 and 1963. A few years after the land reform plan was implemented (by the regime of Shah Mohammad Reza), Darvish Khan, who had lost some of his land as a result of it, in an act of protest hung stones from tree branches in his garden that had gone dry.”

(toiran.com Photo/ Shahin Kamali)

Iranmanesh noted that Darvish Khan must have been a strong man, as some of the stones he hung from the trees by using thick wires weigh as much as 30 kilograms. “In addition to stones, he used such items as goat horns and animal skulls to decorate tree branches.”

He said that while it is less than 50 years since the garden was created, its story has spread by Iranian and foreign visitors, attracting many tourists to Miyandoab Village every year.

(toiran.com Photo/ Shahin Kamali)

“For tourists, the Stone Garden is more attractive than other tourism sites of Sirjan,” he said.

Iranmanesh added that tourism and cultural heritage experts say the site has no major historical value but is important from cultural and anthropological aspects.

Darvish Khan’s gravestone (toiran.com Photo/ Shahin Kamali)

Hassan Esfandiyarpour, Darvish Khan’s only son, told Iran Daily that the Stone Garden was registered on Iran’s National Heritage List in 2008.

He, however, said that he still owns and lives in the garden. Esfandiyarpour noted that his father died in 2007 at the age of 90 and was buried in the Stone Garden.

(toiran.com Photo/ Shahin Kamali)

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