The garden design — also called the kheshti (Persian for "tile") design — is one of the most distinctive design conventions in the entire Oriental rug tradition. The rug's field is divided into a rectangular grid of panels, with each panel containing a different motif: a stylized flowering tree, a cypress, a vase, an animal, a fountain, or a floral arrangement.
The design represents a Persian formal garden viewed from above — the geometric layout echoes the chahar bagh ("four gardens") plan that has defined Persian garden architecture for over a thousand years. In the Islamic tradition, the formal garden symbolizes paradise, making the garden design carpet a representation of the gardens of paradise described in the Qur'an.
Two main regional traditions of garden design rugs:
- Bakhtiari garden design — the most widely produced garden design today. Bakhtiari weavers in southwestern Iran (in the Chahar Mahal va Bakhtiari province) made the garden design their signature, producing it in great quantity from the 19th century onward. Bakhtiari garden rugs typically feature 12–35 panels in a grid, with stylized cypress trees, weeping willows, peacocks, vases, and floral motifs filling the panels.
- Classical Safavid garden carpets — large, formal 16th–17th-century court carpets depicting elaborate gardens with watercourses (chaharbagh streams), pools, and trees. These are rare museum pieces; the most famous is the Pazyryk-related Wagner Garden Carpet.
Beyond Bakhtiari, garden-design rugs are also occasionally produced in:
- Tabriz — sometimes called Tabriz garden rugs
- Heriz — geometric versions of the garden layout
- Caucasian — some Karabakh weavings adapt the panel-grid layout to local style
The garden design is one of the most visually communicative Persian rug formats — even viewers who can't identify the regional origin of a Persian rug can usually read a garden design as a "garden seen from above" once it's pointed out. This makes garden rugs particularly successful as conversation pieces in contemporary interiors.