Garden Design in the Americas

Gardens in America developed on much the same lines as those in Europe, but because of the different time scales of the two societies the American equivalents of European periods were often violently accelerated and usually of little depth in the communities to which they were related. Our knowledge of American gardens before the conquest is not great, but it is enough to tantalize us into wishing to know more. It is true that the gardens of the primitive Indian societies were of the same form as those of other similar societies and of as little interest, but the gardens of their civilized communities seem to have been rather different. In 1519 the Spanish invaders under Cortez entered the capital of the Aztecs and found there a civilization which had achieved gardens of a highly developed type. The most famous of these, although not the most interesting, were the so-called `floating gardens'. The floating gardens and fountains of Tezcuco in Mexico are almost as famous as the hanging gardens of Babylon. The Babylonian gardens had a religious origin, but the Mexican were the product of the same sort of circumstances that created the city of Venice, inded you can seem some of the same influences in the garden fountains. Some time in the thirteenth century a wandering tribe of Aztecs who had made themselves unpopular with their neighbours took refuge on a group of islands in the shallow, almost fishless, lake of Tezcuco. Here they set about creating the land necessary for their survival. In similar circumstances the Dutch recovered land by a system of dikes, but the Aztec method was to weave together roots of aquatic plants with small branches until they formed a mattress strong enough to support the soil which they dredged from the bottom of the lake. This was the origin of the famous Chinampas which the conquistadores were amazed to find floating on the bosom of the water.