In the beginning....

The word 'garden' itself comes from ghordos, an ancient Indo-European word for 'enclosure', and the same root is in 'yard' and 'orchard'. Garden historians remind us, too, that the ancient Persian word for 'enclosure' was pairidaeza - which applied both to the hunting parks of kings and to walled gardens for produce and ornamental plants. This became pardes in the Old Testament, paradesisos in Greek and our 'park' in English. But of course it is also 'paradise', the Garden of Eden and the fields of heaven, free from the ravages of death and of time. Thus gardens have two meanings or types mixed together; one is the useful plot for vegetables and herbs and fruit to feed the household and connected with the farm. And the other is the pleasure garden, religious or sensual, that can vary from flowering scented plants to vast green landscapes.

The Roman Gardens

There wasn’t a lot of gardening going on before the Romans arrived. We grew a few turnips and vegetables, but these made up small plots close to home, protected from animals by a belt of hawthorns or hazel hedges. Essentially Britain was a land of a few clearings, dense forests and swampy marshes. Gardening lore came with Romans when they brought their roads, amphitheatres, town plans and temples, baths and under floor heating.

In the time when Agricola became governor of Britain in AD78 and started to build towns and straighten the roads, Rome was in the throws of a gardening frenzy, full of plant hunters all out competing each other with more exotic species of flower from the distant parts of the empire. Rome had nursery gardens and workshops to make pots, there were inner courtyard gardens with shrubs, pools and fountains, stone dinning couches and frescoes imitating the life the country outside. Gardeners were also skilled plantsmen knowledgeable about techniques of grafting and layering and the use of manure. And this was the expertise they brought to Britain.

One of the first roman gardens uncovered in Britain, wasn’t discovered until 1961 in Fishbourne when a workman digging with his spade dug into some tiles, and then a short while later uncovered a vast roman courtyard with a pool enclosed like a cloister by colonnade walkways. Fisbourne was a huge garden run by agent for a wealthy merchant, who employed specialists in all areas of gardening. It was in gardens such as Fishborne and Frocester Court in Gloucestershire that they grew and brought to Britain lilies, acanthus and rosemary, native violets, and periwinkles, new flowers like crocus and pansy, and all the different species of roses. The Romans brought new trees like the sweet chestnut, as well as walnuts and almonds, apricots and quince, plums and fig, mulberries and medlars. The Romans also brought leeks, onions, radishes, cucumber, lettuce and kale, artichoke and asparagus, and herbs like dill, marjoram, parsley and mustard.

In the long era of Roman Rule nearly 1000 villas like Fishbourne were built, large and small. Yet in 410 when Emperor Honorius recalled his troops, the towns declined and the villas crumbled. The great Roman legacy and their gardens disappeared, only to be discovered many centuries later.

The Dark Ages

Anglo Saxons weren't big on gardening, and sadly much of the Roman horticultural empire vanished. A few of the plants that they brought over colonised in the wild, like fennel and wormwood, and thus survived these dark years from 450 to 850 AD, but many perished until they returned in the Middle Ages. The Dark Age was one of restlessness, battling and brutality; pusuits which hardly encouraged green fingered enthusiasts.  Slowly under the Christian Church came the first impulse for revival, not out of love, but out of medicinal needs and beliefs.  As saxon rules were converted to Christianity, so cathedrals and abbeys were built and monasteries establish, such as Bedes in Jarrow.  In these abbeys garden were planted with all the 'herbs' and also various kinds of fruit and nut trees. The motivation was more to create an infirmary to heal the sick than to endulge in the respledent delights of nature. For the late Anglo Saxons flowers were known more for their use than for their beauty, and it is around this time that flower and plant names were derived from their practical value; peonies became known for their pain relief, Christmas roses for mania and melancholy; the periwinkle for love and fertility. Other common plants had magical powers, like the nettle, netele, for warding off socery. Or the yarrow which was pounded with greaseand use to salve wounds, or the foxglove, which gives us digitalis and was used as a vomit or purge. So although the Anglo Saxons were by no means aesthetists, flowers and plants did not disappear altogether.

The Middle Ages

The Norman conquest changed the gardening impetus. William The Conqueror was big into castles, and started transforming the small village layout of England into a more elaborate landscape full of towns, manor houses, abbeys and monasteries. It was in the latter buildings that gardening found it's revival. As in the Dark Ages the monks and nuns felt an obligation to feed the poor village folk from their herb and vegetable gardens, and the religious fervour that came with Normans imbeded this obligation into the hearts of the monks.

Since the great inquisition when England begun to start accounting for things, records around this time began to show how valuable and precious monks regarded gardening utensiles such as forks and spade, buckets and sives and garden gloves. Tools had become aimportant and expensive, and this was shown in 1190s by Alexander Neckham, De Utensibilis, who gives a very up to date list, including the first wobbly wheelbarrow which only appeared in Britain in this century. Peasant labourers also began to work on the grand gardens, grubbing out trees, weeding and picking fruit.

It was not only monastories that wanted a garden, every town and village and hospital wanted a garden. The most famous and largest Covent Garden in central london acted as the main larder of Westminster Abbey.  Behind the growth of the garden was the continued development of medicianal herbs, of which the authority Dioscoride's De Materia Medica, but also came the 'enclosed garden'.  Gardens began to develop walls and hedges, and in amongst these walls small cloisters in gardens began to pop up, where monks could find solitude and a place for religious contemplation.  In keeping with the Christian ethics, 'the enclosed garden', implyed both the fruitful cycle of nature and feed the pleasure of the senses.   Around 1300 AD gardening was about to start flourishing.