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 Tim Lambert
The earliest gardens were grown for practical reasons. People grew herbs or vegetables.

However, when man became civilised an upper class emerged with the leisure to enjoy purely decorative gardens. They also had servants (or slaves) to do the gardening for them.

In the hot and arid climate of ancient Egypt, rich people liked to rest in the shade of trees. They created gardens enclosed by walls with trees planted with trees in rows. Sometimes the Egyptians planted alternating species. They grew trees like sycamores, date palms, fig trees, nut trees and pomegranate trees.

They also grew willows. The Egyptians also grew vineyards. Although beer was the drink of the common people the rich liked drinking wine.

The Egyptians also grew a wide variety of flowers including roses, poppies, irises, daisies and cornflowers.

Egyptians also liked their gardens to have rectangular ponds. Sometimes they were stocked with fish. They also liked to grow fragrant trees and shrubs. They believed that the gods liked gardens and so temples usually had gardens by them and different trees were associated with different gods.

However, in Egypt there was no strict division between gardens for pleasure and gardens for produce. As well as being beautiful gardens were used to grow fruit and vegetables and to produce wine and olive oil.

In the ancient world beautiful gardens were also created in what is now Iraq. The Assyrians came from Iraq and in the period 900 BC-612 BC they ruled a great empire in the Middle East.

Like the Egyptians upper class Assyrians enjoyed gardens. They created large hunting parks but they also made pleasure gardens irrigated by water canals.

The Assyrians planted trees such as palms and cypresses. Like the Egyptians they planted the trees in rows, sometimes alternating species. They also created ponds and they cultivated vines and some flowers. When the Assyrian Empire was destroyed in 612 the city-state of Babylon created another huge empire.

King Nebuchadnezzar is supposed to have built the hanging gardens of Babylon, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.

According to tradition his wife Amyitis missed the mountainous terrain of her homeland so the king built a stepped terrace garden for her. Man-powered pumps watered it. (Probably a chain pump). At any rate the Babylonians liked formal gardens. They enjoyed the shade of trees planted in straight lines.

In 539 the Babylonian Empire was destroyed by the Persians who created yet another great empire. The Persians were superb gardeners. They built underground aqueducts to bring water to their gardens without it evaporating on the way.

These were called qanats. Like the earlier civilisations the Persians grew fruit trees and fragrant shrubs and flowers. Their gardens also contained pools, fountains and watercourses or rills.

The Greeks were not great gardeners. They sometimes planted trees to provide shade around temples and other public places but pleasure gardens were rare.

The Greeks did grow flowers but usually in containers. Although Greek travellers admired the gardens of the east in Greece gardens were usually grown for practical reasons. The Greeks grew orchards, vineyards and vegetable gardens.

When they conquered Egypt in 30BC the Romans introduced eastern ideas about gardening. Rich Romans created gardens next to their palaces and villas.

The Romans were masters of the art of topiary. Roman gardens were adorned with statues and sculptures; Roman gardens were laid out with hedges and vines.

They also contained a wide variety of flowers including acanthus, cornflowers and crocus, cyclamen, hyacinth, iris and ivy, lavender, lilies, myrtle, narcissus, poppy, rosemary and violet. In the towns wealthy Romans built houses around a courtyard.

The courtyard usually contained a colonnaded porch, a pool and a fountain as well as beds of flowers. After the Romans conquered Britain they introduced a number of new plants including roses, leeks, turnips and plums. They may also have introduced cabbages.

Gardening in the Middle Ages

After the fall of Rome gardening declined in Western Europe. However, the church still made some gardens for growing herbs (e.g. for medicines) and some flowers were grown to decorate church altars.

Meanwhile, in the 7th century the Arabs created a huge empire. When they conquered Persia they took over many Persian ideas about gardens. Islamic gardens were surrounded by walls and very often they were divided into four watercourses.

In the centre was a pool or pavilion. Islamic gardens also contained rills and fountains and they were decorated with mosaics and glazed tiles. Rows of plane or cypress were planted for shade. The Arabs also grew fruit trees.

In the early 8th century the Arabs conquered Spain. The Moors as they were called, grew ash, laurel, hazel, walnut, poplar, willow and elm.

They also grew orange and lemon trees as well as dates, figs, almonds, apricots, apples, pears, quinces, plums and peaches. They grew a wide variety of flowers including roses, hollyhocks, narcissus, violets, wallflowers and lilies.

Gradually order was restored in Europe and by the late 13th century the rich began to grow gardens for pleasure as well as those for medicinal herbs and vegetables.

In the Middle Ages gardens were walled both to protect them from wild animals and to provide seclusion. In the 14th and 15th centuries gardens were planted with lawns sprinkled with fragrant herbs.

They had raised flowerbeds and trellises of roses or vines. Gardens also contained fruit trees and sometimes they had turf seats. In the Middle Ages monasteries grew gardens of medicinal herbs.

They also grew orchards and vineyards as well as vegetables. They also grew flowers for their altars. However monastery gardens were not purely functional. They were a place for the monks to relax and enjoy nature.

In the 16th century there was a revival of the ideas of ancient Greece and Rome. Ideas about gardening changed, influenced by classical ideas.

In the 16th and 17th century symmetry, proportion and balance became important. Very often gardens were laid out with a central axis leading down from the house with a number of cross axes forming a grid pattern. The garden was divided into parts by hedges.

In the 16th and 17th centuries flowerbeds were often laid out in squares, separated by gravel paths. 16th century gardens were adorned with sculptures, fountains and topiary. Often they also contained water jokes (unsuspecting visitors were sprayed with jets of water). Water organs played music or imitated bird song.

Gardens also often contained grottoes (cave like buildings). Furthermore knot gardens were popular. Intricate patterns like knots were made by planting lines of box and herbs like lavender. Furthermore in the 16th and 17th centuries hedge mazes were very popular in Europe.

Also in the 16th and 17th centuries many new plants were introduced into Europe including tulips, marigolds and sunflowers.

The horse chestnut was also introduced into Europe in the 16th century. Potatoes and tomatoes were also introduced into Europe at that time.

18th Century Gardening

In the early 18th century many people rebelled against formal gardens and preferred a more ‘natural’ style.

However, in the 18th century gardens often contained shrubberies, grottoes, pavilions, bridges and follies such as mock temples.

However, in the 18th century pleasure gardens were still only for the upper class and the middle classes. If poor people had a garden they had to use it for growing herbs or vegetables. They had neither the time nor the money to grow plants for pleasure.

Meanwhile, in the North American colonies life was, at first, rough but by the end of the 17th century the wealthy began to create pleasure gardens. However the Americans preferred more formal gardens. Life in the 18th Century; 19th Century Gardening; In 1804 the Horticultural Society was formed. (It became a royal society in 1861).

Greenhouses

In 1829, Dr Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward accidentally discovered that if plants were kept sealed under glass they formed their own micro-climate. During the day the plants transpired water. At night it condensed on the glass and fell onto the soil where it was reabsorbed by the plants. Creating sealed micro-climates made it much easier to transport plants around the world.

Many new plants were introduced into Europe in the 19th century including the monkey puzzle or Chile pine. Then, in 1830 Edwin Beard Budding (1796-1846) invented the lawn mower. In the 19th century gardeners began to build large greenhouses or conservatories to provide plants with both heat and light.

There were other changes. In the 19th century the middle class grew in numbers and in wealth. As well as great estates gardens attached to suburban villas became important. — www.localhistories.org