March 28, 2010
Gardening across History
Any gardener starts pondering buying garden tools made in the UK or alternatively checking out that Alan Titchmarsh lawn rake - but it’s worth pointing out, only over centuries have we hit this level. Settlements were gardening millennia before anyone dreamed up the lawn rake or the garden trowel. What we know as an everyday leisure occupation started to take shape before Ancient Egypt and the pyramids.
Primitive gardeners were guided by a mix of practical reasons, spirituality, and pleasure. The important fruit and nut bearing trees and similar edible vegetation would grow around pools for fish, being enclosed by walls of stone that also added layout. While admittedly the majority was grown as food some plants were grown in the name of their deities. Temple officers also grew various plants in sites far from the gardens. Assyrians, Persians and Babylonians mingled together water features, flowers, nuts, and stunning architecture with fruits and vegetables to design splendid settings. As you’d imagine, one other example of a civilization who practiced this was the Romans - though the Greeks dedicated themselves to the food potential of their farmland alone. Though they wouldn’t have had garden forks or lawn rakes, these cultures did use quite the selection of elementary aids which were the prototypes of the hoes and spades gardeners use in the present day. They used copper, iron, bronze, stone… the famous ages sync well to the raw materials being employed.
Everything was abruptly stopped under the pressure of the Dark Ages. Gardening suffered, but even then, the priests kept the old knowledge alive. Slowly we returned to growing flower gardens for pleasure. Guidelines began to emerge, a formalized system controlling how the garden would, in the end, appear. You only need to think about the artistry inherent in a hedge maze for that to be obvious. Such rules aren’t still mandatory, meaning there’s really no reason to fret - have fun, and don’t be embarrassed regarding searching for tips how to get rid of that annoying garden forks deformity or perusing some well written garden spade reviews. Where others abided by gardening conventions that had been codified over generations, Humphry Repton and others created a remarkable mix of formal and informal style by placing together modern decorative pieces like statues with a realistic looking design.
Certainly, the situation has changed over the centuries, but gardens are still cultivated for similar reasons to our ancestors’. There’s no way you’ll encounter a more relaxing place to be than a garden paradise.
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