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"The Garden in History"

Part One:  "The Garden's Genesis"
By William R. Hoppé

     In one form or another, gardens have been with us ever since man first began to control and modify his environment.  No sooner had he tamed fire, mastered animal husbandry, acquired a rudimentary knowledge of farming, discovered the making of pottery, and learned how to build a crude but effective hut to shelter himself from the elements, or he built a mud and stone wall around it to keep marauders of both the four and the two legged varieties from invading his personal domain and from stealing his prized possessions.  In the middle of the space created by this enclosure and far enough from the high-water mark of the creek that bordered one side of it, he built a fireplace out of rocks and boulders to roast his meat and cook his meals, to throw some heat on cold nights, and to provide some light to keep away nighttime predators and by which to read his newspaper while seated in his favorite easy chair made from carefully hewn and smoothed tree limbs covered with animal pelts. Thus it was that "primitive"; man created the first, albeit crude, residential garden.

     For much of its subsequent existence, the garden remained a small enclosed area right next to and incorporated with the house.   As early as 1000 BC, the Egyptians were already designing and building their homes and gardens together as integrated units. (Yes, as this picture of the "Home of a Wealthy Egyptian" suggests, the Egyptians were the first to developed the "GardenHome" concept, we didn't!)
 The Persians, the   Arabs, and the Chinese enjoyed
  elaborate formal gardens when America's European
  forebears still roamed their forests clad in animal pelts.  The
  Greeks where the ones who first introduced the
  garden to Europe after "importing" it from Persia and Media
  during the 3rd century BC right after the conquests of
  Alexander the Great. They called theirs a paradeisos, a
  word which, in turn, came from the old Avetan-Iranian word
  "pairi-daeza" which meant "enclosed space" and from which
  our word "paradise" stems.

     Much like the Garden of Eden, the enclosed oasis gardens of the Medians and the Persians encountered by the Greeks were built around the concept of the four branches of the "river of life" that flowed from a centrally located source (a well) in the garden to the four corners of the "world" (the compass) and, thus, divided the garden into four, more or less, equal parts or plots.  The four branches, of course, provided the life giving and sustaining water, while trees of all sorts provided the much needed shade and edible fruits and nuts.  The four plots were cultivated to yield additional fruits, vegetables, and cereals to feed man and his beasts which were domiciled within the walls of the garden as well.  This aptly called "four-fold field plot", which can be found pictured on Persian carpets, in the Hindu Vedas, and in the gardens built by the Mogul Emperors, prevailed, in one form or another, through the Greek and Roman era all the way to the Tudor gardens of England, the contemporary Renaissance gardens elsewhere in Europe, and indeed to the gardens of today.  In the Arabic world, where the "four-fold field plot" had found its start, it was further divided into an "eight-fold field plot" soon after the emergence of Islam to signify the eight divisions of the Koran. 

            Click on this image for an interesting site on
                     "The Hanging Gardens of Babylon"

     After the fall of Greece, it were the Romans who, during the 2nd and 1st centuries BC, furthered the art of garden making.  Foreign conquests and the fall of Greece brought the world's riches, most all of it plundered, to the gates of Rome.  Of those, King Solomon's orchards, herb gardens, vineyards, and pleasure grounds, King Ahasuerus' garden pavilions (described in chapter 1, verse 6, of the Book of Ester;  "Where were white, green, and blue hangings, fastened with cords of fine linen and purple to silver rings and pillars of marble: the beds were of gold and silver, upon a pavement of red, and blue, and white, and black marble."), and countless of thousands of Greek sculptures and statues, were the most auspicious!   At the height of the Roman Empire, Rome was surrounded by magnificent villas and opulent gardens while countless of grand country manors (villa rusticas) with their own gorgeous gardens dotted the entire spine of Italy from north to south.  Rome's terrace gardens, like those found at Pompeii, featured marble colonnades, rose gardens, fountains, fishponds, pools for bathing, boxwood and laurel hedges, groves of walnut trees, elaborate and extremely expensive garden structures, and of course the looted art works from Greece and elsewhere.   Pliny the Elder and other Roman authors of the time, left us detailed data (much of it subsequently verified by archeologists) regarding garden design principles and gardening techniques and methods which, to this day, form much of the basis for the Western world's approach to garden design and making!

     Upon the disintegration of the Roman Empire and the subsequent onset of the Dark and the Middle Ages (500AD - 1450AD), the art of garden making along with virtually all other manifestations of culture declined precipitously in Europe.  The only place where garden making flourished for a while was in Spain where, during the 8th century AD, the conquering Moors introduced highly decorative and sophisticated courtyard gardens.  Called "patios" (sounds familiar?), those courtyard gardens were, essentially, a series of open-air rooms interpenetrated by the rooms of the mansion, throughout the entire fabric of which was interwoven the unifying theme of the "river of life" with its four branches, and contained ponds, fountains, sheets of falling water for the cooling of air currents, herbs, fruit trees, roses, colorful vines, and potted plants.  

     The famous gardens of the Alhambra in southern Spain and the Generalife (almost right next door but separated from the Alhambra by a steep ravine) are notable examples of such gardens and the only two that have survived the ravishes of time more or less intact. (Click here for a virtual tour of both gardens!)  In the garden of the Alhambra in particular, the union of outdoor rooms and their indoor counterparts, and the extent to which distant views are permitted simultaneously to penetrate both the outdoor and the indoor rooms, it is rather difficult to tell, at times, whether one is indoors or outdoors!  On a wall of the "Hall of the Sisters" one can still read the following inscription: "I am the garden, and every morning am I revealed to you in new beauty.  Observe how I am adorned and you will reap the benefit of a commentary on decoration.  How many delightful prospects I enfold! Prospects in which the enlightened mind finds the fulfillment of every desire".

     While the Moors kept garden design alive during much of the 8th and part of the 9th centuries AD in Spain, the picture was bleak elsewhere in Europe.   We have the monasteries with their walled flower, fruit, and kitchen gardens to thank for the fact that the art of garden making survived at all! It is especially to the Benedictines that we owe a great debt of gratitude.  As the 9th century AD plan of the Abbey of St. Gall shows, their monastery gardens were patterned after the old Roman country manor gardens and contained orchards of apple, pear, peach, plum, and other fruit and nut bearing trees, vineyards, and kitchen gardens offering fruits, herbs, and vegetables for their dinner tables.  In addition they grew a variety of flowers such as roses, lilies, violets, irises, and others, obviously, to decorate their church altars and to satisfy their need of beauty.

     Even though interest in garden making, per sé, remained extremely low, interest in horticulture grew after the Crusades (from the end of the 11th to the end of the 13th centuries, AD), with the introduction of a great many now familiar but, theretofore, unknown new trees, shrubs, perennials, bulbs, and annuals by those returning from the Middle East and Arab countries.   As a result, orchards, vineyards, and kitchen gardens began to show up in ever greater numbers especially around the castles of the nobility.  This growing interest in horticulture and gardening, reawakened popular interest in garden design, a development that, no doubt, was applauded and encouraged by the various monastic orders.  During the mid 13th and early 14th centuries AD, these "secular" gardens gradually began to shed the rather austere, utilitarian character of their monastic examples and to embrace purely recreational aspects.  Ever so slowly they, thus, became places not only for use, but for enjoyment and pleasure as well.

Go to ...
The Garden in History – Part 2
What's a Garden?    What a Garden can Offer
About our Gardens     GardenHome Concept Design Example
A Virtual Tour of the Gardens at Dumbarton Oaks