History of gardening

Egyptian tomb paintings of the 16th century BC[4] are some of the earliest physical evidence of ornamental horticulture and landscape design depicting lotus ponds surrounded by symmetrical rows of acacias and palms.

Vitruvius asserted that firmitas (firmness, durability, strength), utilitas (commodity, convenience, utility) and venustas (delight, loveliness, beauty) were the primary objectives of design.

Andrew Jackson Downing and Frederick Law Olmsted adapted European forms for North America, especially influencing the design of public parks, campuses and suburban landscapes.

The 7th century BC, Assyrian king Assurbanipal is shown on a sculpture feasting with his queen, reclining on a couch beneath an arbour of vines, attended by musicians.

A Babylonian text from the same period is divided into sections, as if showing beds of soil with the names of medicinal, vegetable, and herbal plants written into each square, perhaps representing a parterre design.

"[6] From around 1,000 BC, the Assyrian kings developed a style of city garden incorporating a naturalistic layout, running water supplied from river headwaters, and exotic plants from their foreign campaigns.

The Kama Sutra mentions details on house gardens and that a good wife should plant vegetables, bunches of sugarcane, clumps of the fig trees, mustard, parsley and fennel, various flowers like jasmine, rose and others likewise be planted and seats and arbours should be made and the middle of the garden should have a well, a tank or a pond, various other treatises also mention establishing lotus shaped baths, lakes, lotus-shaped seats, swings, roundabouts, Menageries.

[13] Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Xuanzang mentions accounts of Nalanda where "azure pool winds around the monasteries, adorned with the full-blown cups of the blue lotus; the dazzling red flowers of the lovely kanaka hang here and there, and outside groves of mango trees offer the inhabitants their dense and protective shade.

Manasollasa, a twelfth century text giving details on garden design, asserts that it should include rocks and raised mounds of summits, manicured with plants and trees of diverse varieties, artificial ponds, and flowing brooks.

Temple gardens had plots for cultivating special vegetables, plants or herbs considered sacred to a certain deity and which were required in rituals and offerings like lettuce to Min.

Gaius Maecenas, a culturally influential confidante of the emperor Augustus, built the first private garden estate of Rome to fulfill his creative ambitions and restore his delicate health.

The Byzantine empire spanned a period of more than 1000 years (330–1453 AD), and a geographic area from modern day Spain and Britain to the Middle East and northern Africa.

More formal gardening texts, such as the Geoponika (10th century), were in fact encyclopaedias of accumulated agricultural practices (grafting, watering) and pagan lore (astrology, plant sympathy/antipathy relationships), going back to Hesiod's time.

The concept of the heavenly paradise was an enclosed garden style that gained popularity during that time and especially after the iconoclastic period (7th century) with the emphasis it placed on divine punishment and repentance.

In the kitchen gardens, fennel, cabbage, onion, garlic, leeks, radishes, and parsnips might be grown, as well as peas, lentils, and beans, if space allowed for them.

The infirmary gardens could contain Rosa gallica ("The Apothecary Rose"), savory, costmary, fenugreek, rosemary, peppermint, rue, iris, sage, bergamot, mint, lovage, fennel, and cumin, amongst other herbs.

The herb and vegetable gardens served a purpose beyond that of production, and that was that their installation and maintenance allowed the monks to fulfil the manual labour component of the religious way of life prescribed by the Rule of St. Benedict.

The cloister garth, a claustrum consisting of the viridarium, a rectangular plot of grass surrounded by peristyle arcades, was barred to the laity, and served primarily as a place of retreat, a locus of the vita contemplativa.

[18] The viridarium was often bisected or quartered by paths, and often featured a roofed fountain at the centre or side of the garth that served as a primary source for wash water and for irrigation, meeting yet more physical needs.

[21]Walking around the cloister while meditating was a way of devoting oneself to the "path of life";[20] indeed, each of the monastic gardens was imbued with symbolic as well as palpable value, testifying to the ingenuity of its creators.

In the English poem "The Feate of Gardinage" by Jon Gardener and the general household advice given in Le Ménagier de Paris of 1393, a variety of herbs, flowers, fruit trees, and bushes were listed with instructions on their cultivation.

The following list of garden features were used: Due to being an early hub for Western society and being used for centuries, Mediterranean soil was fragile, and one could think of the region's landscape culture to be a conflict between fruitfulness and frugality.

Whereas forested areas were more useful for hunting purposes in Britain during the Middle Ages, 18th century patterns demonstrate a further deviation in gardening approach from practicality toward design meant to please the senses.

[29] August, dowager princess of Wales worked with well-known botanists of the time, Lord Bute and Stephen Hales, to greatly expand the garden with exotic plants.

Garden designers like William Kent and Capability Brown emulated the allegorical landscape paintings of European artists, especially Claude Lorraine, Poussin and Salvator Rosa.

The French Picturesque garden style falls into two categories: those that were staged, almost like theatrical scenery, usually rustic and exotic, called jardin anglo-chinois, and those filled with pastoral romance and bucolic sentiment, influenced by Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

The gardenesque approach involved the creation of small-scale landscapes, dotted with features and vignettes, to promote beauty of detail, variety and mystery, sometimes to the detriment of coherence.

[33][34] The Aztec elite built elaborate pleasure gardens in the Valley of Mexico consisting of various types of plants as well as water features such as aqueduct-fed fountains.

Subsequently, Garrett Eckbo, James Rose, and Dan Kiley – known as the "bad boys of Harvard" – met while studying traditional landscape architecture became notable pioneers in the design of modern gardens.

[39] He was landscape architect (as well as a botanist, painter, print maker, ecologist, naturalist, artist, and musician) who designed of parks and gardens in Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and in the United States in Florida.