The Greco-Roman Influence
As Rome moved west to conquer Europe, so did its style. The Romans took the Greek influences and Persian influences and adapted them to the western climate. In 460 CE, Sidonius wrote about his Roman villa in France and the gardens surrounding it. Roman outposts throughout Europe had gardens attached to bring a bit of home to the “savage” lands.
Because of this influence, many western gardens were geometric and consisted of right angles, designed to complement or harmonize with architecture. They often conformed to or extended the lines of adjacent buildings. Courtyards, dating back to Greek and Roman times, were common in many western European countries.
The Persian/Islamic Influence
When the Muslims conquered Persia, they saw the beautiful paradise gardens there and adopted them for their own. In the eighth century, when the Moors occupied Spain, they brought these gardens into Europe. These gardens were full of shade and scents and they developed “sunken beds” created so that the tops of the flowers were level with the walking paths. Daring gardeners in 11th century Seville made fifteen-foot deep sunken beds of orange trees so that viewers could pass near the upper branches of the trees.
In the 13th century Alphonso X of Castile had Arabic works of horticulture translated and his sister, Eleanor, married Edward I of England, importing gardeners from Spain to recreate Spanish gardens. This influence would become integrated with the rest of Europe in the 1300s when gardeners would start to steal the designed seen in Persian rugs for their gardens.
The American Influence
When the Spanish conquistadores first viewed the gardens of the Aztecs, they were amazed. The Aztecs had rooftop gardens, a landscaped park that rivaled any in Europe in its size, and the chinampas—the floating gardens—that made sufficient produce from the shallow lake they floated on. While all was destroyed, the Spanish brought back accounts of what they saw and could integrate their ideas into their home territory.
100 to 400 CE
It was Pliny the Elder that first mentions topiaries—the concept of cutting a shrub in the shape of a sculpture. In a letter to a friend his nephew, another Pliny, described his villa in Tuscany, with shrubs cut to look like animals facing each other along a walkway.
Another early gardener was Hadrian. More well-known for his wall across Britain, the emperor spared no expense on his own villa east of Rome, which included statuaries, fountains, and reflecting pools. Hadrian’s palace was remembered later in the Renaissance period, and many gardeners tried to copy him in the neo-classical era.
Monastery and Cloister Gardens: 500 (to Today!)
The early Christians had among them devout souls that isolated themselves from the rest of the world to converse with their god. In 530 an Italian nobleman named Benedict established a holy order of monks on Monte Cassino. They were self-supporting and grew vegetables, kept livestock, bred fish, made honey and cheese, wine and ale, and also kept a “physic garden” to make medicine for themselves and those that came to them for help.
The cloister garden is a direct descendent of the Roman courtyard. Cloisters were used by monks for walking and reading. Often, they were rectangular lawns surrounded by a roofed colonnade. Lawns may have been created by monks. It was Albertus Magnus in the mid-1200s that mentioned how to make a lawn without the aid of a lawnmower.
The King of the Franks and Emperor, Charlemagne, issued hundreds of laws to bring order to his kingdom, the most interesting involving gardening practices. He had a list of 73 plants and 16 trees that he felt should be planted in every city of his Empire. A monastery garden design created after 814 shows how much the monks agreed with him.
The monks’ cemetery was planted with fruit and nut trees, doubling as their orchard. In the kitchen garden vegetables and herbs were raised, such as onions, celery, parsley, parsnips, radishes, beets, and carrots, poppies, cumin, and coriander. The physic garden set next to the infirmary and included roses, lilies, mint, rosemary, fennel, sage, and irises.
Many of the plants from the medieval era had Christian connotations. White roses were associated with the Virgin Mary, and red ones the blood of Christ or of various Christian martyrs. Lilies were a symbol of purity associated with the annunciation. Columbine was seen as a visual representation of the Holy Spirit. Snowdrops were called “Mary’s tapers.” Irises, especially the blue ones, were associated closely with Mary. Violets represented the humility of the Virgin. Lily of the Valleys were also called “Our Lady’s Tears.”
Castle Gardens: 1100 at the Earliest
Castles had small pleasure gardens within their walls for the use of ladies, children, swains, and troubadours. There are many surviving castle spaces where one can see places for gardens within the inner or outer bailey. They had trellis fencing, flowery meads, turf seats, tunnel-arbors, and a profusion of sweet-scented flowers. Castles also had orchards and hunting parks outside the battlements.
Flowery Mead. A formal lawn was divided into quarters and each grassy square contained ornamental flowers and bulbs.
Scented Arbor. An arch trellis framed a bench and scented climbing roses, honeysuckle, or jasmine grew up around it.
Turf Seats. A stone bench was planted with scented herbs that released their odors once sat upon.
Pebble Pathways. Found in the gardens of Spain, black and white pebbles would be laid along the path in a geometric shape.
Cottage Gardens: 1200
In France during the 13th century a cote was a small shelter. A cottage was the cote and all the property around it. What we do know was that all the land would have been used for vegetables and medicinal and culinary herbs of the era, including the rose and the lily.
Neo-Classical Revival: 1300
It was Italy that brought back the garden styles of Ancient Greece and Rome first.
Early Renaissance Style: 1450
In Europe, the first renaissance gardens were made beside castles and within fortified manor houses, in or near towns. Typically, they were geometrical arrangements of knot gardens, inspired by the knot patterns which appeared on eastern carpets. Heraldic emblems filled the gardens of the noble and royalty, placed on posts around the garden. The medieval gardener for the noble and wealthy subjects could obtain apples and pears, among the more popular lilies and roses.
Hedge Mazes. While early mazes used low-growing plants and were used as spiritual devices to symbolize man’s tortuous path to righteousness, the later hedge maze was a whimsical adventure. Most often formed of clipped yew, box, or privet (all poisonous, by the way), and the longest-lived one is the Hampton Court maze built in 1690.
High Renaissance: 1540
The making of country villas with gardens was resumed during the renaissance. Like their Roman predecessors, they had statues, fountains, flowers and fruit. The classic renaissance arrangement was a series of rectangular enclosures with terraces at different levels. Medieval gardens had been inward-looking. Renaissance gardens, with their hillside terraces, began to look outward. Mannerist gardens, as the name suggests, were less calm and more inclined to theatrical effects within the garden boundary.
Heraldic Emblems. Gilded lions, leopards, greyhounds, dragons, and antelopes were brightly painted and topped with flags or weather vanes of gold and traditionally placed on green and white posted throughout the garden. Green was for eternity, and white for purity.
Early Baroque: 1600 (Italy)
The Baroque style began with the projection of axes beyond the boundaries of enclosed renaissance gardens. In towns, the avenues focused on churches and other features. Outside towns they pushed into the landscape, bringing mountains, lakes and forests into composition with the garden. The results were dramatic.
Greenhouses. Greenhouses were conceived in primitive form as far back as the Roman era, but the first modern-style greenhouses were seen in Italy to house tropical exotic plants explorers brought back. The concept quickly spread to France, where the first greenhouses were used to house medicinal tropic plants and preserve orange trees, and England where they were called “conservatories.” The techniques improved and greenhouses became a novelty for the rich as well as an important part of preserving plants for the sciences. By the Victorian Era, some of the grandest greenhouses were constructed. Nurseries for growing plants until they were large enough to be sold came quickly after the first greenhouses.
Renaissance, Enclosed Style: 1640 (British Isles)
The renaissance manner of designing enclosed gardens originated in Italy during the fifteenth century. A variant of the style was used in England during the sixteenth century, but no complete examples survive. By the mid-seventeenth century the idea of making enclosures of different character was prevalent in the British Isles. Typically, the enclosures held knots, rectangles of scythed grass, fruit trees and a mount with a shelter on top, from which the ladies of the house could view the outside world.
Knot Gardens. A square was created and patterns of different evergreens were carefully interlaced, weaving in and out of each other. The beds enclosed by this knotwork sometimes contained flowers or it was grassed or filled with color sand or gravel to enhance the knots. The gardeners that created knot gardens were considered craftsmen and artists.
Quincunx. A formal garden layout divided into quarters with gravel pathways, a fountain in the middle, and knot garden features in the beds.
French Style: 1640 (France)
France was the leading country in the development of High Baroque gardens. They were associated with autocracy, the Catholic faith and development of mathematics and science. The characteristic features were a centrally positioned building, elaborate parterres, fountains, basins and a “Cartesian” geometry with avenues reaching out to make the surrounding landscape part of the composition.
Fountains. A hydraulic fountain was the ultimate status symbol in the baroque period. Statuary was placed in the middle of a still pool and water spouted from the mouth or from a goddess’s bucket.
Parterre de Broderie. A parterre is a formal garden construction on a level surface consisting of planting beds, edged in stone or tightly clipped hedgings, and using gravel paths to form a symmetrical pattern. Parterres didn’t need to have flowers at all. The broderie part was from the shrub box, which was clipped to create tight scrolls and arabesques throughout the garden.
Franch Style: 1660 (British Isles)
The High Baroque style of garden design, as developed in France, had some influence in England, particularly after the return of Charles II, in 1660, from a period of exile in France. Gardens took over large landscapes and demonstrated power over nature with topiaries, hedges, and large layouts. They tended to be enclosed by walls and the avenues were made by planting lines of trees, not by cutting a ride through an existing forest.
Avenue of Trees. A long straight line of large forest trees across a deer park was a symbol of complete control over nature and became the classic formal feature of the baroque garden.
Dutch Style: 1680 (Holland)
Holland came under the cultural sway of France during the seventeenth century, but the country was also at war with France. Dutch baroque gardens were more enclosed and less lavish. Het Loo, in the “high” part of Holland has an enclosed garden and some radiating avenues in the woods outside. It was made by William of Orange before he became King of England. Gardens in the “low” part of Holland made even less use of avenues and they often ran along the canals that are prevalent in Holland.
Urban Gardening: 1700s (London)
By the early eighteenth century, London was crowded and smog-filled, making it difficult to have a healthy patch of earth. One man named Thomas Fairchild wrote a book entitled The City Gardener showing how residents of the city could grow flowers in city squares, riverside plots, balconies, window boxes, and heavily shaded backyards.
Georgian Gardens: 1700-1800 (British Isles)
The birth of the landscape garden, formal gardens were swept away to recreate classic wilderness on country estates. Englishman Lancelot “Capability” Brown brought back the concept of have a garden look natural despite it being manmade. He abandoned the symmetrical gardens of the past to bring forth a stylized version of nature. His successor continued the transition, focusing on woodlands and moving water as integral parts of the scene. He incorporated rustic buildings as focal points of his “painting” and believed in combining the beauty of nature with the convenience of gardens.
Framing Views. The gardeners of this era used large trees to frame a structure or landscape feature, maximizing views of open spaces.
Ha-has: 1730s. Out in the country, the unique landscape feature known as the “ha-ha” was created. A trench was dug on the boundary line and a stone wall set in place like a sunken fence. This allowed an unimpeded view of the countryside.
Classical Statues. Large awe-inspiring statues were added to gardens to add splendor.
Victorian Gardens: 1820-1860
The number one reason gardening became popular was the increase in the amount of leisure time the middle class could devote to it. The underlying theme of the Victorian garden, as in much of Victorian life in general, was man's conquest over the elements. This was the age of overkill, where nothing was deemed impossible in the garden. Nothing exemplifies this as much as the lawn, which takes constant care to maintain. But the Victorians went a step further, attempting to turn their lawns into outdoor parlors. Eight essential elements of a late Victorian garden are:
- Lawns: A front and rear lawn were considered imperative in a formal garden. Cottage gardens and woodland gardens were more informal, and lawns were not such a requisite. By this time rudimentary lawnmowers had been invented, thankfully.
- Trees: Trees shaded important parts of the house where direct sun was unwelcome, such as the dining room or veranda. Trees were also used to frame the carriage drive or approach to the house. In the city, trees were often planted along the street for more privacy. Weeping trees and those with interestingly colored or shaped leaves were popular and used to draw the eye. Depending upon climate, one might collect exotic trees and "display" them as part of the lawn decor. Most often these exotics were kept in conservatories.
- Shrubs: Shrubs were used mainly for delineating property lines or marking paths. They might also be used to hide an "unsightly" wooden fence or house foundation, or used to frame doorways or bay windows. It was popular to mix the species of shrubs.
- Fencing: Most properties at the turn of the century were fenced. Cast-iron was the most popular material because it was the most ornamental. The more elaborate the home, the more elaborate the fence and gate. In more informal settings, rustic fencing was used. This might be made of "rustic" wood bent into decorative motifs. The picket fence was to be hidden with shrubs at best, or vines if shrubs were out of the question.
- Ornaments: Urns, sculpture, fountains, sundials, gazing balls (lawn balls), birdbaths, and man-made fish ponds were all commonly used. Cast-iron was a common material for such accoutrements. Often, urns were not planted with anything, but were simply set in pairs to ornament stairs or balustrades.
- Seating: Benches, seat, pavilions, and gazebos were made as decorative as possible. Cast iron or "rustic" wood were the most commonly used materials. Seats were placed under trees along garden walks, and in pavilions and gazebos. Rattan and wicker furniture was used mainly on porches and in sun rooms of the house.
- Flowers: Carpet bedding—the use of same-height flora—was popular. Most often it was used to depict a motif or design, but under attack by gardeners like Gertrude Jekyll, who thought that each flower and plant should be grown for its intrinsic beauty and not as part of a "carpet." Roses were extremely popular and climbing varieties were often trained over a trellis, bower or pergola. Urban dwellers without much of a yard would often plant large urns beside the front door with flowers or small shrubs. Flowers could also be planted along the front walk underneath the shrubs which bordered it. Window boxes were also popular.
- Vines: Vines of all types were used as decoration and to hide "unsightly" features, such as fences and tree stumps. Vines could also be trained up the side of a porch to ward off the sun.
Arboretums. Impressive trees from abroad prompted gardeners to enhance properties with arboretums, collections of trees creating unlikely circular forests in the landscape.
Italian terraces. Usually balustraded and decorated with urns and vases, grand staircases, and parterres, the middle-class and noble houses adopted this feature to connect the garden to the house.
Asian Gardens. With more plants coming from the Far East at this time, such as Rhododendrons, many gardeners were adapting the traditional elements of the Japanese, with their bridges and tea houses, and Chinese woodland gardens. Artificial Stone: 1840s. A new cement was invented that could be poured over rocks to form vast boulders and natural-looking rock formations.
Public Parks: Late 1800s. The term “public park” was first coined in the 19th century and it was started with the belief that open areas would give the towns more air and reduce the spread of infectious diseases. This was erroneous. Because of this mistaken belief, most public parks are open flat lawns with very orderly plant beds.
Suburbia: 1860s
One of America’s first suburbs was just outside Chicago where architect Fredrick Law Olmsted created curving streets, generous public spaces and had all the residents agree to not put fences or walls between their front lawns to create an image of an open parkland.
Cottage Gardens: 1900
The return of the cottage garden was in direct response to the vulgarity of Victorian gardening. Jekyll's idea of an "herbaceous border" called for flowers of varying heights. Usually planted along a shrub border, wall, or garden path, the herbaceous border began with the shortest plants in the front. Each successive row of flowers would be taller than the last, with the tallest plants at the back.
Victory Gardens: 1918
World War I saw America give over to gardening with a patriotic effort. Gold courses, public parks, and front lawns were converted into vegetable gardens to prevent food shortages. When the Second World War came upon America in 1943, rooftops, window boxes, and pare lots were again converted into gardens. Cabbages, tomatoes, carrots and beans grew on the White House lawn. The government called for 18 million victory gardeners and got more than 21 million, producing possibly 40% of all vegetables at that time.
Woodland Gardens. After World War I, many gardeners turned to woodland gardens because they were so easy to maintain.
Garden Rooms. Large gardens were divided to create individual garden rooms, creating different moods with the flowers planted.
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