THE HISTORY OF GARDEN-MAKING 



he could forget the cares of his daily existence he sought to give it 

 a charm of its own, to beautify it by flowers, to embellish it by 

 cunning devices, and to make it by all the means at his disposal a 

 kind of little shrine where he could offer incense to the goddess. 

 Nature. 



The first records of gardens systematically arranged and laid out on 

 fixed principles are to be found in th^ works of Eastern writers. Jn 

 Assyria, Persia and Egypt, the science of gardening was closely 

 studied, and the principles oh which the pleasure ground should be 

 designed to fulfil its particular purpose were well understood. In 

 India, too, the value of a garden setting to enhance the dignity of 

 the palace or the temple was fully appreciated ; the Indian rulers 

 even in remote ages were garden lovers, and turned to full account 

 the opportunities they enjoyed of shaping the luxuriance of tropical 

 nature into ordered forms, and of adding to nature's beauties by 

 bringing her into relation with architecture. 



But the ancient history of gardening is by no means confined to the 

 East ; in the West the Greeks and the Romans did much to develop^ 

 the a rt, and the Romans especially carried it to a very high degree 

 of completeness. The account written by Pliny the younger of his 

 winter garden on the Bay of Ostia, and of his other garden at his 

 Tusculan villa in the Apennines, gives an admirable suggestion of 

 the way in which the wealthy and cultured Roman citizen 

 surrounded himself with fantastic contrivances, and used all the 

 resources of the gardener's craft to increase the attractiveness of 

 the place in which he lived. The winter villa with its hedges of 

 rosemary and box, its terraces, its vines, fig-trees, and mulberries, 

 and its porticos and seats from which charming views could be 

 obtained over land and sea, must have been a delightful retreat, and 

 it is easy to understand the joy of ownership which is so apparent in 

 Pliny's descriptions of his house by the sea. But it was the 

 Tusculan villa upon which he lavished his attention, and to the 

 adornment of which he devoted so much care and ingenuity. 

 The garden of this villa must indeed have been a marvel, so full 

 was it of quaint and curious features, and so inventively were all 

 its details devised. From the terrace before the house stretched a 

 lawn ornamented with box-trees clipped into the shapes of various 

 animals, and round this lawn ran a walk shut in by evergreens. 

 Next came a circular enclosure with a group of clipped box-trees 

 in the centre ; and near by was another enclosure in the form of a 

 hippodrome with sides of alternate box and plane trees connected 

 by ivy, and curved ends of cypress backed by bay-trees. The paths 

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