Elche residents prized gardens and orchards as respites from the arid conditions, offering an oasis of scents, sounds, touch, and visual beauty. In the Islamic period, gardens symbolized paradise. A strong literary tradition presented gardens as metaphors for love, loss, memory and the passing of time. The “desert castles” garden-estate concept first entered the Iberian peninsula in the 8th century CE when Umayyad amīr Abd al-Rahman I fled from Syria to Córdoba, Spain. Under the Caliphate of Córdoba, the garden-estate tradition percolated into Toledo, Seville, Granada, and Elche. After the fall of the Umayyad dynasty, later rulers of Al-Andalus continued the garden-estate tradition. Elche residents planted linear walled gardens in which water channels established symmetrical plots, irrigating rectangular landscapes of fruit trees, flowers, vegetation, and often walkways flanked the sides.