THE HISTORY OF GARDEN-MAKING 



'N attempting any detailed history of gardening 

 and garden-making, the chief difficulty would 

 be to decide where to begin. It is practically 

 impossible to say where and at what date the 

 idea first sprang up in the human mind that 

 pleasure was to be derived from an ordered 

 and deliberately planned surrounding of Jrees 

 and flowers, or how the progression was made 

 from cultivation of the ground for strictly 

 utilitarian purposes to the planting of spaces in which leisure 

 moments could be spent in frank enjoyment of nature. Probably, 

 if material were available, such a history could be started at that 

 remote period when man ceased to be merely a nomad, wandering 

 here and there with his flocks and herds, and when, instead, he 

 adopted some sort of permanent habitation. His first thought 

 would be, when he had settled in the country he had chosen, to 

 provide for his wants by growing those plants which were necessary 

 for food, and by a natural process he would change from the purely 

 pastoral life to that of the agriculturist. Next, he would seek to 

 supply himself with those herbs and trees which, if not exactly 

 necessities of existence, can be counted as more or less indispensable 

 for human enjoyment ; and to satisfy this desire he would add to 

 his possessions the vineyard, the orchard, and the herb garden. Out 

 of the wish to increase his material luxuries would grow, by an 

 obvious sequence of ideas, the further wish to develop what aesthetic 

 instincts he might possess, and to use these instincts for self- 

 gratification. 



The garden, then, in its earliest form can be regarded as the result 

 of an attempt to make a piece of cultivated ground pleasant to look 

 at and agreeable to rest in. It was the shady place where the man 

 who had laboured came for relaxation, where he turned for bodily 

 comfort and the pleasure of the eye. In the East, the cradle of 

 ancient civilisations, climatic conditions had to be considered, and 

 the cool shadow beneath the fig-tree or the vine was a necessity to 

 the jaded worker. So he planted his trees and trained his vines to 

 give him shelter from the heat of the sun, he planned quiet nooks 

 to which he could retire ; and bit by bit he built up a garden which 

 was frankly intended to be a place apart, set aside for repose and 

 recreation. When he had once accepted the principle that this 

 corner of the land he tilled should be recognised as a refuge in which 



