The History of Garden Design: Pliny and the Renaissance Garden

For all practical purposes the history of gardening as an art begins at the Renaissance. We know a good deal about gardens before then, but not enough to trace a consecutive narrative of development. This is because gardening, more than architecture, more than painting, more than music, and far more than literature, is an ephemeral art; its masterpieces disappear leaving little trace.

Ancient gardens are known from a few pictures and plans and many generalized descriptions, but their physical remains are scant because such fortunate accidents as the overwhelming of Pompeii do not often happen. The modern field archaeologist scraping away with his penknife does not yet pay much attention to the scarcely perceptible changes of strata which show where a garden has been.

Nowadays gardening is thought of more often as a pastime than an art. But there was a time, in the sixteenth century in Italy, in the seventeenth century in France, and in the eighteenth century in England, when it was considered a very important art, perhaps the most important of all, the one at which all others met. Painters, architects, sculptors, poets and philosophers gave their minds to the comprehension of its nature and the perfecting of its practice. Men who excelled at it became the confidants of statesmen and the friends of kings.

The word garden is at root the same as the word `yard'. It means an enclosure. Words may start with a simple enough meaning, but with use they lose it and end up facing in a different direction. Today an enclosure is not necessarily a garden and the way in which gardens ceased to be enclosures is an essential stage in their development. It is legitimate to speak of vegetable gardens, hop gardens and zoological gardens, but these are all very different matters; such places may appeal to the senses, but they do not exist to appeal to the senses; their main purpose is to fulfil some material need, or to gratify our acquisitive instincts, or to assuage our curiosity.