The early history of gardening is largely entangled with the history of agriculture, with gardens that were mainly ornamental generally the preserve of the elite until quite recent times. Smaller gardens generally had been a kitchen garden as their first priority, as is still often the case.
The broad traditions that have dominated gardening since ancient times include those of the Ancient Near East, which became the Islamic garden, the Mediterranean, which produced the Roman garden, hugely influencing later European gardening, and the Chinese garden and its development on the Japanese garden. While the basic gardening techniques were fairly well understood by trial and error from early on, the plants available in a particular location have changed enormously, especially in recent centuries. Many new groups of plants have been introduced from other parts of the world, and the ornamental plants now used are mostly cultivars bred to improve qualities such as colour, length of flowering, size and hardiness.
In Europe during the Renaissance, garden design was dominated by the Italian garden, which developed into the French formal garden, dominating the Baroque period. Both were formal styles, attempting to impose architectural principles on the garden. In the 18th century, the English landscape garden developed, apparently informal and natural, but requiring very large spaces, and by the end of the century dominated all Europe in the largest new gardens.
Gardening may be considered as aesthetic expressions of beauty through art and nature, a display of taste or style in civilized life, an expression of an individual's or culture's philosophy, and sometimes as a display of private status or national pride—in private and public landscapes.
Introduction The enclosure of outdoor space probably began around 10,000 BC. Historians imagine the first enclosure was a type of barrier used for excluding animals and marauders, perhaps beginning in West Asia, thereafter spreading to South and East Asia, and westward into Greece, and Europe. The modern words "garden" and "yard" are descendants of the Old English "geard", which denotes a fence or enclosure.
After the emergence of the first civilizations, wealthy citizens began creating gardens for purely aesthetic purposes. Egyptian tomb paintings of the 16th century BC are some of the earliest physical evidence of ornamental horticulture and landscape design depicting lotus ponds surrounded by symmetrical rows of acacias and palms. Another ancient tradition is of Persia: Darius the Great was said to have had a "paradise garden" and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon were renowned as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Persian gardens were designed along a central axis of symmetry.
Persian influences extended to Hellenistic Greece after Alexander the Great. C. 350 BC there were gardens at the Academy of Athens, and Theophrastus, who wrote on botany, supposedly inherited a garden from Aristotle. Epicurus had a garden where he walked and taught, and he bequeathed it to Hermarchus of Mytilene. Alciphron also referenced private gardens in his writing.
The most influential ancient gardens in the western world were those of Ptolemy in Alexandria, Egypt, and the horticultural tradition that Lucullus brought to Rome. Wall paintings in Pompeii, Italy, attest to later elaborate development. The wealthiest Romans built extensive villa gardens with water features, including fountains and rivulets, topiary, roses, and shaded arcades. Archeological evidence survives at sites such as Hadrian's Villa.
Vitruvius, a Roman author and engineer, wrote the oldest extant design manual in 27 BC. De architectura libri decem (Ten Books on Architecture) addressed design theory, landscape architecture, engineering, water supply, and public projects, such as parks and squares. Vitruvius asserted that firmitas (firmness, durability, strength), utilitas (commodity, convenience, utility) and venustas (delight, loveliness, beauty) were the primary objectives of design. Some still consider these elements essential to quality design of landscape.
Byzantium and Moorish Spain continued horticultural traditions after the 4th century AD and the decline of Rome. By this time, a separate horticultural tradition formed in China, which was transmitted to Japan, where it developed into aristocratic gardens featuring miniaturized and simulated natural landscapes centered on ponds, and the severe Zen garden form featured at temples.
In Europe, the medieval garden developed slowly, perhaps with a particular revival in Languedoc and the Île-de-France in the 13th century. By the end of the period, an interest in ornamental gardens was well developed. The rediscovery of descriptions of antique Roman villas and gardens led to the creation of a new form of garden, the Italian Renaissance garden, in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. The Spanish Crown built the first public parks of this era in the 16th century, both in Europe and the Americas. The formal garden à la française, exemplified by the Gardens of Versailles, became the dominant horticultural style in Europe until the middle of the 18th century, when the English landscape garden and the French landscape garden acceded to dominance. In the 19th century, a welter of historical revivals and Romantic cottage-inspired gardening emerged. In England, William Robinson and Gertrude Jekyll were influential proponents of the wild garden and the perennial garden, respectively. Andrew Jackson Downing and Frederick Law Olmsted adapted European forms for North America, especially influencing the design of public parks, campuses and suburban landscapes. Olmsted's influence extended well into the 20th century.
The 20th century saw the influence of modernism in the garden: from the articulate clarity of Thomas Church to the bold colors and forms of the Brazilian Roberto Burle Marx.
Environmental consciousness and sustainable design practices, such as green roofs and rainwater harvesting, are becoming widely practiced as innovations in these fields continue to develop.
The historical development of garden styles Mesopotamian gardens
Mesopotamia, the "land between the Rivers" Tigris and Euphrates, comprises a hilly and mountainous northern area and a flat, alluvial south. Its peoples (Sumerians, Akkadians, Assyrians, and Babylonians) were urban and literate from about 3,000 BC. Evidence for their gardens comes from written texts, pictorial sculpture, and archaeology. In Western tradition, Mesopotamia was the location of the Garden of Eden and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Temple gardens developed from the representation of a sacred grove; several distinct styles of royal garden are also known.Dalley Stephanie, (1993) "Ancient Mesopotamian Gardens" Garden History, the Journal of the Garden History Society, v21.
The courtyard garden was enclosed by the walls of a palace, or on a larger scale was a cultivated place inside the city walls. At Mari on the Middle Euphrates ( 1,800 BC), one of the huge palace courtyards was called the Court of the Palms in contemporary written records. It is crossed by raised walkways of baked brick; the king and his entourage would dine there. At Ugarit (c. 1,400 BC), there was a stone water basin, not located centrally as in later Persian gardens, for the central feature was probably a tree (date, palm, or tamarisk). 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. Trophies of conquest are on display, including the severed head of the king of Elam hanging from a fragrant pine branch. 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.
On a larger scale, royal hunting parks were established to hold the exotic animals and plants which the king had acquired on his foreign campaigns. King Tiglath-Pileser I (c. 1,000 BC) lists horses, oxen, asses, deer of two types, gazelle and ibex, boasting "I numbered them like flocks of sheep."Grayson AK, (1991) Assyrian Rulers of the Early First Millennium BC, vol 1, Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia, Assyrian Periods 2.
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. Assurnasirpal II (883–859 BC) lists pines of different kinds, cypresses and junipers of different kinds, almonds, dates, ebony, rosewood, olive, oak, tamarisk, walnut, terebinth and ash, fir pomegranate, pear, quince, fig and grapevines: "The canal water gushes from above into the gardens; fragrance pervades the walkways; streams of water as numerous as the stars of heaven flow in the pleasure garden ... Like a squirrel, I pick fruit in the garden of delights." The city garden reached its zenith with the palace design of Sennacherib (704–681 BC), whose water system stretched for 50 km into the hills, whose garden was higher and more ornate than any others, and who boasted of the complex technologies he deployed, calling his palace and garden "a wonder for all peoples".
The biblical Book of Genesis mentions the Tigris and Euphrates as two of the four rivers bounding the Garden of Eden.Genesis 2: 10–14 No specific place has been identified, although there are many theories.
The Hanging Gardens of Babylon are listed by classical Greek writers as one of the Seven Wonders of the World – places to see before you die. The excavated ruins of Babylon do not reveal any suitable evidence, which has led some scholars to suggest that they may have been purely legendary.Finkel, Irving (1988) "The Hanging Gardens of Babylon" in The seven Wonders of the Ancient World, ed. Peter Clayton and Martin Price, Routledge Alternatively, the story may have originated from Sennacherib's garden in Nineveh.Dalley, Stephanie, (2013) The Mystery of the Hanging Garden of Babylon: an elusive World Wonder traced, Oxford University Press. .
Indian subcontinental gardens Gardens in the Indian subcontinent appear in early literature, which mentions different types of gardens and methods to build them. Archeologically, the gardens at Sigiriya in Sri Lanka are the best-preserved water gardens in South Asia and are also one of the oldest landscaped gardens in the world.
Indian gardens