Greek garden

In the eighth century BC, the works of Homer contain a reference to gardens, the Neverland of Alcinous, in the purely mythic Phaeacia, which stood as much apart from the known world of Homer's hearers as it did from the heroic world of Achaeans he was recreating, with much poetic license:[3] "We live far off", said Nausicaa, "surrounded by the stormy sea, the outermost of men, and no other mortals have dealing with us.

[5]The gardens of the palace were possessed of an unearthly lushness, in the fenced orchard outside the courtyard, fronting the high gates: Here luxuriant trees are always in their prime pomegranates and pears, and apples glowing red, succulent figs and olives swelling sleek and dark.

[7] Poetic descriptions of the Greek landscape and flora are well known from early times: the tale of Narcissus, Daphne's transformation into a laurel, oaks inhabited by dryads and streams with nymphs, and Persephone eating pomegranate seeds, but it is not until the Hellenistic era that gardeners write treatises on their work, called kepourika.

Aside from vegetable plots and orchards, Ridgway found some literary and a small amount of archaeological evidence for public, or semi-public gardens linked to sanctuaries.

In their bases were the shattered remains of flower pots in which layered stems had been rooted; however, associated coins show that the first of these plantings had been made not before the third century BC.

The temenos, or sacred ground, of the Academy was walled round, for ritual reasons, as pleasure gardens would be, for practical ones; within its precincts were buildings: small temples, shrines and tombs, in addition to that of the presiding hero.

Though Harpalus, Alexander's successor at Babylon, grew some Greek plants in the royal palace and walks,[20] mainland Greece, mother of democracy and Western cultural traditions, was not the mother of European gardens: the great Hellenistic garden was that of the Ptolemaic dynasty in Alexandria, a grand, walled paradise landscape that included the famous Library of Alexandria, part of the Musaeum.