Evolution of The Ancient Greek Garden
Evolution of The Ancient Greek Garden
Evolution of The Ancient Greek Garden
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To cite this article: Patrick Bowe (2010): The evolution of the ancient Greek garden, Studies in the History of Gardens & Designed Landscapes: An International Quarterly, 30:3, 208-223 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14601170903403264
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Summary
The evidence for gardens of this period comes principally from Homers poems The Odyssey and The Iliad. They imply that substantial gardens, essentially kitchen gardens, were an attribute of kingship. Of the series of royal gardens that he evokes, one is in or adjoining a city, another is in a suburb, yet a third is in the country. A picture emerges of gardens that are enclosed, traversed by an irrigating stream or streams and divided into three sections an orchard, a
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figure 1. A depiction of an olive grove with trees planted approximately ten to twelve feet apart as recommended by Theophrastus. The practice shown here, known as cudgelling, of beating the trees with sticks so that the ripe olives fall to the ground is decried by Theophrastus as it can damage a tree by breaking the branches. A detail from an Athenian black-figure amphora, 550500 BC (British Museum, London).
and bays at regular intervals of no more than nine feet, apples and pears at slightly larger intervals and almonds, figs and olives at intervals that were larger still41 (figure 1). Both Aristotle and Theophrastus imply that vines were grown in rows, the former seeming to suggest that each row was staggered in relation to the next in a geometric pattern that was referred to, in later, Roman times, as a quincunx.42 Although there is no direct evidence, it is probable that vegetables and flowers were also grown in rows, perhaps in drills. Certainly, crops in the fields were aligned in ridges as is indicated by the chorus in Aristophanes play, Peace.43 The range of orchard trees expanded from that pictured by Homer to include myrtle, bay, almond, mulberry, medlar, cornel cherry, sorb and hazel. Of each
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of them have distinct gay colours orchards were considered sufficiently attractive to serve as locations for intimate social gatherings. The fifth-century poet, Pherecrates evokes a fantastical gathering, its picnic: spread out beneath myrtle boughs and poppy anemones, the most beautiful apples ever seen hung over their heads.46 Vines were grown in ways more sophisticated than on the simple poles evidenced in the Archaic period.47 One method involved the formation of what Demosthenes refers to as tree-vines.48 In this method, three or more vines were planted close together and then trained spirally upward and around each other so that they fused to form a tree trunk. At head height, the new growth was trained outwards to form branches, the spreading branches being supported at their tips by forked wooden props.49 So, eventually, a tree-like canopy was formed (figure 3). A second method consisted of training two or
figure 2. The elegance of attire of the women picking fruit suggests that an orchard was not only a place of production but also of enjoyment. An Athenian red-figure column krater, 500450 BC (Metropolitan Museum, New York).
figure 3. A tree-vine with its multiple, spirally trained trunk and its lateral branches supported by forked props. A detail from an Athenian black-figure amphora, 575525 BC (Musee du Louvre, Paris).
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figure 4. A fifth-century lekythos illustrates two vines trained upwards in an open spiral, the subsequent growth being trained as an aerial espalier. (Landeshauptstadt Hannover, Museum August Kestner).
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figure 5. A vineyard as a place of recreation and relaxation is depicted in this scene of the myth of the meeting of Dionysos and Ariadne in a vineyard. A detail from a late fifth-century volutekrater by the Creusa Painter (Toledo Museum of Art).
Xenophon who praises Persian gardens because they are full of the good and beautiful things that the soil produces.61 Luxury fruits and vegetables of high quality and often out of season were produced in addition to the basic food crops as a result of improvements in the techniques of gardening.62 The Athenian orator, Isocrates, boasts: as for the fruits of the earth, our city . . . instructed the world in their uses, their cultivation and the benefits derived from them.63 The luxury that was associated with the consumption of vegetables at this time is typified by Aristoxenus, the Cyreniac philosopher, who watered his garden lettuce with honeyed wine in the evening before he picked it so as to improve its flavour.64 Other plants known to have been cultivated include herbs such as calamint, bergamot mint, rue, thyme65 and sweet marjoram,66 the latter two frequently transplanted from the wild.67 Roses, in gardens such as
figure 6. In some gardens, roses were grown in separate beds. A woman enjoying the scent of a rose is depicted in a detail on a sixth-century Attic red-figure vase (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preusis Kultrubesitz: Antikensammlung).
that of Demosthenes, were grown in beds of their own68 as violets may also have been69 (figure 6). As yet, there is no indication where large shrubs such as oleander, chaste bush, mallow and southernwood, all known to have been cultivated, were grown.70 They may have been scattered throughout the garden. The enjoyment of leisure in a garden may have led to the erection of structures to facilitate it. A garden seen as a pleasant place in which to write the fifth-century playwright Euripides used his garden as a place in which to write plays71 may also have been the impetus for the erection of such
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figure 7. In the shade of a grapevine arbour, Herakles relaxes on a bed to enjoy a banquet. Note the trunk of the vine emerging from the ground behind the bed. A detail from an Athenian redfigure amphora, 550500 BC (Munich, Antikensammlungen).
figure 8. A garden scene in which a group of figures are shown in the shade of a grapevine arbour from which a comic mask is suspended. A Lucanian red-figure nestoris, 400350 BC (British Museum, London).
structures. The dwelling in the royal garden of Syracuse in which Plato lived for some time was, probably, a substantial structure.72 However, more typical may have been the grapevine arbours depicted in fourth- and fifth-century vase paintings. The use of an arbour as the location for a banquet is shown on a sixth-century amphora73 (figure 7). Figures relax in the shade of an arbour on a fourth-century nestoris. From the cross bar of the arbour hangs a decorative mask, known as an oscillum, because it was designed to oscillate or swing in the wind74 (figure 8). These masks, usually representing gods associated with the soil, were often hung temporarily during annual festivals such as those of the sowing season. The couch depicted in the former arbour boasts much decorative detail as well as richly patterned textiles suggesting that furniture used out of doors may have been just as elegant as that used inside.75 Artefacts such as pots
played a role in the garden. Although simple clay garden pots have been excavated in Athens and at Eretria, more elegant, decorative pots, with foliage being tended, are depicted in a fifth-century vase painting of the mythological queen, Alcestis76 (figure 9). Of the arrangement of pots, we know only of the general observation of Xenophon: pots have a graceful appearance when they are placed in a regular order.77 An exceptional use of garden pots occurred during an annual festival known as the Gardens of Adonis. Broken pots, planted with small quantities of short-lived lettuce, fennel, wheat or barley, were exposed on the rooftops of houses so that they grew and withered quickly. The practice was designed as a reminder of lifes transience78 (figure 10). Small-scale garden artefacts of a more utilitarian character included baskets,79 trellis woven from flat-stalked lettuce80 and stakes or posts on which to grow ivies81 (figure 11).
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figure 9. Plants are being arranged in highly decorated pots in preparation for the wedding of Alkestis, the mythological Greek princess who is seen relaxing in a portico. A detail from a red-figure epinetron, 450400 BC (National Archaeological Museum, Athens).
Summary
The gardens of which there is evidence during this period are the gardens of the citizens of the city-states of Greece. Walled enclosures, they were located both in the cities and in their suburbs. It is assumed that they were divided rationally into three sections orchard, vineyard, and vegetable and flower gardens as is evidenced in the Archaic period. A system of irrigation, often comprising a geometrical arrangement of watercourses, was a key determinant of a gardens layout. Its efficiency also depended on a system of planting in rows. This resulted in gardens with an overall formal layout that may also have been the result of an aesthetic sense that manmade beauty involved geometrical order. Not only useful plants but also luxury fruits and vegetables were grown. Arbours and bowers provided shade for outdoor living. Elegant furniture and
figure 10. A broken clay pot with plants is about to be raised on to the roof of a house during the festival known as the Garden of Adonis. Note that the clay pots on the ground are raised on pedestals. An Athenian red figure lekythos, 425375 BC (Karlsruhe, Badisches Landesmuseum).
artefacts were characteristic of domestic exteriors as much as interiors. There was a developing sense of the garden as a place for the enjoyment of leisure and, in addition, an appreciation of the beauty of plants for its own sake. The fifthcentury statesman, Pericles, referred to the gardens around Athens as accessories that embellish a fortune indicating that they had also become vehicles for the display of wealth.82
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figure 11. Artefacts seen in ancient Greek gardens included decorative woven baskets being used here to carry the fruit crop. A detail from an Athenian red-figure hydria, 500450 BC (San Simeon, Hearst Historical State Monument).
figure 12. Hand watering was an option in gardens that did not have an irrigation system. Here, Eros is depicted while watering flowers from a water pot. A fifth-century Athenian red-figure lekythos (National Archaeological Museum, Athens).
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figure 13. Alexandria. The plan of the city with the regularly laid out royal park marked basileia, shown unshaded (W. Hoepfner, Von Alexandria uber Pergamon nach Nikopolis. Stadtebau und Stadtbilder hellenistischer Zeit, in Akten des XIII. Internationalen Kongresses fur klassische Archaologie Berlin 1988, Mainz 1990, pp. 275285).
quarter to a third of the city in area, the park included not only a number of different palaces but also many pavilions and other buildings. It appears to have been regularly laid out as were its Persian antecedents.106 However, its regularity was broken by an element known as the maiandros. Called after the winding river, Meander, its name is thought to indicate a winding water-channel or canal. This element suggests, as does the Meander garden at Syracuse, a gradual loosening of the formal geometry that until this period was associated with Greek garden design. Another conspicuous feature of the park was the mount or artificial hill known as the Paneion because it was dedicated to the god, Pan. A spiral path wound to the top from which views over the city and its surrounding landscape could be enjoyed.107
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Conclusion
Although the evidence is scant and scattered, it is possible to discern a gradual evolution in Greek gardens. The earliest gardens of which there is evidence, albeit indirect, were enclosed, traversed by a stream and divided into three sections orchard, vineyard and an area of small plots for flowers and vegetables. Extensive and elaborate though they may have been, they were mainly what are now termed kitchen gardens. Although the gardens of the following Hellenic period were still mainly austere, orderly and disciplined kitchen gardens, the attitude to gardens had evolved beyond a purely utilitarian one to one that included recreational and aesthetic components. A further increase in emphasis on leisure and ornament characterized the gardens of the succeeding Hellenistic period. The Hellenistic kings created ornamental gardens of an extent and sophistication that was hitherto unknown in the Greek world. As their empire expanded eastwards, the Romans came into contact with these gardens and were influenced by them in the creation of their own. This assembly of information from many diverse sources, and its attempted systematization, shows that the ancient Greeks pioneered the Western approach to gardening and garden design. Their gardens may be said to represent the birth of the Western garden. Many aspects of their gardens reappear, in a modified form, in Roman gardens and in the gardens of later periods of Western gardens history.
After Alexanders death, his empire was divided into separate kingdoms ruled over by hereditary dynasties. These rulers created and maintained royal gardens of significant extent as has been shown in the development by the Ptolemaic dynasty of the royal park at Alexandria. The Seleucid dynasty laid out royal parks at Apamea in Syria,121 at Ai Khanoum in Bactria122 and at Daphne, then a resort near Antiochia.123 The park at Daphne was attached to a royal retreat as was the park in Jericho belonging to the Hellenized kings of Judaea. The latters regular layout, its pavilions and porticos, its formal pools set in large paved squares, all arranged in a large, enclosed park, seems to echo in its conception the park of the royal palace at Alexandria.124 On a smaller scale, there is evidence of the development also of the palace courtyard garden during this period. A two-story courtyard in the palace of the Attalid dynasty at Pergamon was found, on excavation, to have had no pavement, suggesting that it may have been laid out as a garden.125 The large courtyard attached to the first-century BC palace of the Ptolemaic governor of the city of Ptolemais was found, on excavation, to have a formal pool at its centre126 (figure 14).With steps leading down into it and surrounded on all sides by balustrades and benches, the cement-lined pool must have been used for bathing, the courtyard itself used as a garden or place of elegant leisure.
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