Perfect imperfections

Don’t be tempted to do too much in the garden, says Toby. Some things are improved by being flawed and a little wild

- Toby

IMPERFECTIONS, so the Moors believed, were part of Allah’s great vision and that’s why, when the first Emir of Granada commissioned the construction of his Red Palace or Alhambra in the Spanish Sierra Nevada, faults were deliberately designed in.

Thus restricted, his team of a thousand artisans got to work and they made the palace’s imperfections perfectly imperceptible. When I paid a visit, I couldn’t find a single one, but knowing that a sparkling canal might lack symmetry or that the carved filigrees over an Arabian arch had an errant curve gave the design extra depth.