The Lawns on Mount Carmel

A retelling based on The Priceless Pearl by Rúhíyyih Rabbání (Bahá'í Publishing Trust, 1969). The narrative is retold in our own words; the lines in quotation marks are verbatim from the book. Read the full text for the complete account.

In the first years of his Guardianship Shoghi Effendi was determined to have lawns in front of the Shrine of the Báb on Mount Carmel, and in other places on Bahá'í property. 'Abdu'l-Bahá's gardener assured him that lawns would not grow in Palestine.

In May 1923 he cabled an old Bahá'í friend in Paris: "What of our lawn project?" Receiving no reply, he cabled again ten days later: "Letter still unanswered. What of lawn seeds?" The seeds eventually arrived, but the results seem to have been unsatisfactory. When he returned to Haifa in the autumn he began, as Rúhíyyih Rabbání puts it, "a regular campaign in this direction." On 29 September he cabled a cousin in Egypt: "Our grass seeds apparently unsatisfactory." He asked for thirty kilos of the best seed available in Egypt and suited to the climate. The reply he received did not satisfy him either. So he gave up dealing through relatives and friends and, on 18 December, wrote directly himself to four firms of nurserymen and seed merchants, one in France and three in England, ordering grass seeds, flower seeds, bulbs and cuttings.

In January 1925 he wrote to one of these dealers for more rye grass seed, saying he was very satisfied with the lawn grown from the seed sent before. Rúhíyyih Rabbání understood these to be the first lawns grown in Palestine on a large scale. Green lawns and red paths later became features of the gardens he laid out at Bahjí and on Mount Carmel.

Years afterwards Rúhíyyih Rabbání wrote in her diary of the way he took up any task he wanted done, whether a Temple or a flight of steps in the garden:

He descends on it like a hurricane and never lets up until it is done.

A retelling based on The Priceless Pearl (Rúhíyyih Rabbání, Bahá'í Publishing Trust, 1969). The quoted lines are verbatim from the book. For the fuller account, see the original.

Rabbání, R.. (1969). *The Priceless Pearl*. Bahá'í Publishing Trust. https://bahai-library.com/khanum_priceless_pearl