A History of Gardens, Part 1

7 • POSTED ON October 11, 2005
A History of Gardens, Part 1
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Allow me to take you back in time to Europe at around 800 A.D. At first glance a wonderful era: no greenhouse gases or global warming, but instead lots of fresh air and unspoiled nature. Life was simple, you were either wealthy (few people) or immensely poor (lots of people).

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For almost 2 seasons, I have been sharing my (modest) gardening expertise with you and it recently occurred to me that in all that time I have never touched on the actual history of gardening. An obvious oversight on my part for which I will try to make up this week and, most likely, some weeks thereafter as gardening has a long history!

Just think of The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Greeks, the Romans, the Egyptians, the Chinese and the Japanese, and you will understand what I mean. However, as most of today’s garden styles were derived from the Middle Ages, that is where we will start our journey.

The land belonged to nobility and therefore, farmers had to rent their plots from whichever count or earl occupied the local castle. In exchange for the food they supplied to the castle, peasants received protection against thieves and other vagabonds. Before too long, the Vikings would arrive and everybody would need all the protection they could get but let’s not rush ahead in time and instead, enjoy this lovely rural tale. Whatever was left from a crop after the castle had taken its share was allowed to be sold to travelling salesmen, who in turn sold their merchandise in villages and cities. If you thought being a farmer in those days was hard, think again; travelling salesman were at least as much exposed to thieves and highwaymen as farmers and they did not have the protection of the landowners.

Obviously, medical care and personal hygiene were not highly developed in those days and as a result, the average life expectancy was 35. Although there were doctors and apothecaries in the cities, country folk would seek treatment for their ailments from travelling quacks. In the likely event recovery did not come from whatever it was the quacks sold, the alternative was to seek help from abbeys and monasteries. In those days monks and nuns read original Greek and Latin scripts; this is the reason that a lot of what was discovered in the days of people such as Hippocrates was known to them, and not necessarily to city doctors. In fact, large parts of monasteries were devoted to the sick and almost resembled what we would nowadays call hospitals.

Not that you or I would have wanted to be a patient in a medieval hospital; popular treatments for most diseases consisted of “bleeding” (opening a patient’s veins to let blood out as it was believed that whatever it was that made someone ill would thus be expelled) and “purging” (I will leave this to your own imagination). However, on a more positive note, additional treatment was given by means of herbal medications so monasteries often maintained large herb (and vegetable) gardens within their walls.

In case you are curious, some of the plants you could have come across had you visited an early-medieval European monastery would have been Foeniculum (fennel) which was believed to relieve stomach cramps (as well as have a healing effect on eye-diseases AND whooping cough); Nepeta (catnip) for its ability to help cure skin injuries as well as to promote hair-growth (which of course accounts for the fact you will hardly ever come across a bald cat) and Lavandula (lavender) which - even in 800 - had been around for a long, long time. In fact, the Romans used it to perfume their baths (the plant’s name was derived from the Latin word “lavare”, meaning “to wash”). Medieval monks used lavender as a remedy against headaches, as an antidote for snake bites and to scare away lice (although I firmly believe that if the monks had used lavender in baths, the water and scrubbing would been more effective in killing lice than their “medicinal” use of it).

In general, monastery gardens were mainly utility gardens, often rectangular or square in shape and divided by a cross-shaped path. The centre of the cross was usually marked with a feature (often a tree, a sculpture or a fountain). Clearly, this type of garden was not there for its beauty but much more to serve a purpose – just take a look at a 21st century allotment and you will catch my drift. The beds were subdivided into smaller (again rectangular or square) beds, each holding their own crop. Although some space was dedicated to growing ornamental flowers (mainly to brighten up the altar) the vast majority of crops consisted of vegetables, herbs (medicinal as well as culinary ones) and fruit.

The monastery garden would, much later in the Middle Ages, develop into the classical garden style, an example of which can still be seen in the famous gardens of Versailles, France. In the classical garden, numerous elements such as mazes, parterres and arbours had been added, and instead of growing plants for a purpose, the element of beauty had become much more important but in essence the way the beds were laid out was still identical. It has always struck me as somewhat ironic that in the classical garden (as in “garden”) plants were often sacrificed to allow for gravel, but I guess there is no accounting for taste – or style.

Nowadays, what is referred to as a “formal garden” is reminiscent of the way medieval monastery gardens and – later in history – classical gardens were designed. Characterized by strong geometric shapes, a formal garden to me always looks tidy; it’s the type of garden where hedges are always clipped to perfection and no plant ever droops after a heavy downpour. Obviously, this depends on what plants grown but the likelihood is that people who prefer this particular style would never incorporate more wild and unruly “cottage” plants into their borders.

Nowadays, formal gardens – apart from rectangular beds – can also hold circular, semi-circular or even triangular shaped ones but, as mentioned above, the strong geometric shape always stands out. Although a formal garden can suit any type or size of house, whenever I think of them I automatically envision farmhouses in my native country of The Netherlands. I mean no disrespect to farmers over there or anywhere else in the world – unlike what most kids think, food is not grown in the grocery store and where would we be without our farmers? - yet it never seemed to matter how bad the back of the property looked as long as the front garden was tidy. Quite honestly, as a professional landscaper I very much empathize with this theory; farmers nor landscapers have the luxury of spending much time on their property during spring or summer (their busiest seasons) but as long as the front looks good, who’s going to know what the back looks like?

On this note (and with flushed cheeks) I will bid you my farewell and wish you happy gardening!

René Trim

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About René
René Trim was educated and trained in The Netherlands, before moving to Canada in 2000. After studying the differences in climate and season faced by Ontario gardeners he established Trim Garden Design and Rescue in May 2002. A gardener since the 1980’s, he has a wealth of knowledge and experience, a vast library of reference materials from which to draw answers to various garden situations as well as an enthusiastic and professional staff.