The Gardens No One Believed In

A retelling based on The Priceless Pearl by Rúhíyyih Rabbání (George Ronald). The narrative is retold in our own words; the short line in quotation marks is verbatim from the book. Read the full text for the complete account.

When Shoghi Effendi became the Guardian of the Bahá'í Faith, he was a young man with an enormous task and very little to work with. Among the countless things he set his heart on was something that, to everyone around him, seemed almost foolish: he wanted lawns — green, living grass — around the Shrine of the Báb on Mount Carmel.

The people who knew the land shook their heads. Grass did not grow in Palestine, they said. The soil was dry, the summers were harsh; it had never been done on any real scale. Better to give up the idea.

Shoghi Effendi did not give up the idea.

Instead, he threw himself at the problem with a determination that astonished those who watched. He began writing to seed merchants across Europe — firms in France, firms in England — asking for grass seed. When the cables and letters did not move quickly enough, he sent more, and more urgently. When the first seeds that arrived turned out to be poor, he did not shrug and accept it; he ordered fresh seed from four different companies at once, until at last he had seed good enough to do the job.

And the grass grew. The first large lawns ever grown in that land spread out, green and cool, around the resting place of the Báb — exactly where everyone had said grass could never grow.

Someone who watched him work described his way of doing things in a single unforgettable line:

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

That was the Guardian. The lawns are a small thing, in one sense — just grass. But they are also a picture of how he served for thirty-six years: taking up tasks that others called impossible, and pouring such relentless, loving care into them that the impossible quietly became real. The next time someone says a good thing simply cannot be done, it is worth remembering the green gardens on the mountain that everyone was sure would never grow.

This account is retold for the Bahai Story Library; it is a paraphrase, not the original text. The quoted line is verbatim from The Priceless Pearl (Rúhíyyih Rabbání, George Ronald). See the source for the complete account.

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