gardening
- Key People:
- John Gerard
- John Claudius Loudon
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gardening, the laying out and care of a plot of ground devoted partially or wholly to the growing of plants such as flowers, herbs, or vegetables.
Gardening can be considered both as an art, concerned with arranging plants harmoniously in their surroundings, and as a science, encompassing the principles and techniques of plant cultivation. Because plants are often grown in conditions markedly different from those of their natural environment, it is necessary to apply to their cultivation techniques derived from plant physiology, chemistry, and botany, modified by the experience of the planter. The basic principles involved in growing plants are the same in all parts of the world, but the practice naturally needs much adaptation to local conditions.
For the main history of garden development, see the article garden and landscape design: Historical development.
The nature of gardening
Gardening in its ornamental sense needs a certain level of civilization before it can flourish. Wherever that level has been attained, in all parts of the world and at all periods, people have made efforts to shape their environment into an attractive display. The instinct and even enthusiasm for gardening thus appear to arise from some primitive response to nature, engendering a wish to produce growth and harmony in a creative partnership with it.
It is possible to be merely an admiring spectator of gardens. However, most people who cultivate a domestic plot also derive satisfaction from involvement in the processes of tending plants. They find that the necessary attention to the seasonal changes, and to the myriad small “events” in any shrubbery or herbaceous border, improves their understanding and appreciation of gardens in general.
A phenomenal upsurge of interest in gardening began in Western countries after World War II. A lawn with flower beds and perhaps a vegetable patch has become a sought-after advantage to home ownership. The increased interest produced an unprecedented expansion of business among horticultural suppliers, nurseries, garden centres, and seedsmen. Books, journals, and newspaper columns on garden practice have found an eager readership, while television and radio programs on the subject have achieved a dedicated following.
Several reasons for this expansion suggest themselves. Increased leisure in the industrial nations gives more people the opportunity to enjoy this relaxing pursuit. The increased public appetite for self-sufficiency in basic skills also encourages people to take up the spade. In the kitchen, the homegrown potato or ear of sweet corn rewards the gardener with a sense of achievement, as well as with flavour superior to that of store-bought produce. An increased awareness of threats to the natural environment and the drabness of many inner cities stir some people to cultivate the greenery and colour around their own doorsteps. The bustle of 20th-century life leads more individuals to rediscover the age-old tranquillity of gardens.
The varied appeal of gardening
The attractions of gardening are many and various and, to a degree perhaps unique among the arts and crafts, may be experienced by any age group and at all levels of ambition. At its most elemental, but not least valuable, the gardening experience begins with the child’s wonder that a packet of seeds will produce a charming festival of colour. At the adult level, it can be as simple as helping to raise a good and edible carrot, and it can give rise to almost parental pride. At higher levels of appreciation, it involves an understanding of the complexity of the gardening process, equivalent to a chess game with nature, because the variables are so many.
The gardening experience may involve visiting some of the world’s great gardens at different seasons to see the relation of individual groups of plants, trees, and shrubs to the whole design; to study the positioning of plants in terms of their colour, texture, and weight of leaf or blossom; and to appreciate the use of special features such as ponds or watercourses, pavilions, or rockeries. Garden visiting on an international scale provides an opportunity to understand the broad cultural influences, as well as the variations in climate and soil, that have resulted in so many different approaches to garden making.
The appeal of gardening is thus multifaceted and wide in range. The garden is often the only place where someone without special training can exercise creative impulses as designer, artist, technician, and scientific observer. In addition, many find it a relaxing and therapeutic pursuit. It is not surprising that the garden, accorded respect as a part of nature and a place of contemplation, holds a special place in the spiritual life of many.
Practical and spiritual aspects of gardening are shown in an impressive body of literature. In Western countries manuals of instruction date to classical Greece and Rome. Images of plants and gardens are profuse in the works of the major poets, from Virgil to Shakespeare, and on to some of the moderns.
Another of gardening’s attractions is that up to a certain level it is a simple craft to learn. The beginner can produce pleasing results without the exacting studies and practice required by, for example, painting or music. Gardens are also forgiving to the inexperienced to a certain degree. Nature’s exuberance will cover up minor errors or short periods of neglect, so gardening is an art practiced in a relatively nonjudgmental atmosphere. While tolerant in many respects, nature does, however, present firm reminders that all gardening takes place within a framework of natural law; and one important aspect of the study of the craft is to learn which of these primal rules are imperatives and which may be stretched.
Control and cooperation
Large areas of gardening development and mastery have concentrated on persuading plants to achieve what they would not have done if left in the wild and therefore “natural” state. Gardens at all times have been created through a good deal of control and what might be called interference. The gardener attends to a number of basic processes: combating weeds and pests; using space to allay the competition between plants; attending to feeding, watering, and pruning; and conditioning the soil. Above this fundamental level, the gardener assesses and accommodates the unique complex of temperature, wind, rainfall, sunlight, and shade found within his own garden boundaries. A major part of the fascination of gardening is that in problems and potential no one garden is quite like another; and it is in finding the most imaginative solutions to challenges that the gardener demonstrates artistry and finds the subtler levels of satisfaction.
Different aesthetics require different balances between controlling nature and cooperating with its requirements. The degree of control depends on the gardener’s objective, the theme and identity he is aiming to create. For example, the English wild woodland style of gardening in the mid-19th century dispensed with controls after planting, and any interference, such as pruning, would have been misplaced. At the other extreme is the Japanese dry-landscape garden, beautifully composed of rock and raked pebbles. The artistic control in this type of garden is so firm and refined that the intrusion of a single “natural” weed would spoil the effect.
Choice of plants
The need for cooperation with nature is probably most felt by the amateur gardener in choosing the plants he wants to grow. The range of plants available to the modern gardener is remarkably rich, and new varieties are constantly being offered by nurseries. Most of the shrubs and flowers used in the Western world are descendants of plants imported from other countries. Because they are nonnative, they present the gardener with some of his most interesting problems but also with the possibility of an enhanced display. Plants that originated in subtropical regions, for example, are naturally more sensitive to frost. Some, like rhododendrons or azaleas, originated in an acid soil, mainly composed of leaf mold. Consequently, they will not thrive in a chalky or an alkaline soil. Plant breeding continues to improve the adaptability of such exotic plants, but the more closely the new habitat resembles the original, the better the plant will flourish. Manuals offer solutions to most such problems, and the true gardener will always enjoy finding his own. In such experiments, he may best experience his work as part of the historical tradition of gardening.
Historical background
Early history
Western gardening had its origins in Egypt some 4,000 years ago. As the style spread, it was changed and adapted to different localities and climates, but its essentials remained those of disciplined lines and groupings of plants, usually in walled enclosures. Gardening was introduced into Europe through the expansion of Roman rule and, second, by way of the spread of Islam into Spain. Though clear evidence is lacking, it is presumed that Roman villas outside the confines of Italy contained native and imported plants, hedges, fruit trees, and vines, in addition to herbs for medicinal and culinary purposes.
In medieval times the monasteries were the main repositories of gardening knowledge and the important herbal lore. Though little is certainly known about the design and content of the monastic garden, it probably consisted of a walled courtyard built around a well or an arbour, with colour provided by flowers (some of which, including roses and lilies, served as ecclesiastical symbols), all of which maintained the ancient idea of the garden as a place of contemplation.
The earliest account of gardening in English, The Feate of Gardening, dating from about 1400, mentions the use of more than 100 plants, with instructions on sowing, planting, and grafting of trees and advice on cultivation of herbs such as parsley, sage, fennel, thyme, camomile, and saffron. The vegetables mentioned include turnip, spinach, leek, lettuce, and garlic.
Early gardening was largely for utility. The emergence of the garden as a form of creative display properly began in the 16th century. The Renaissance, with its increased prosperity, brought an upsurge of curiosity about the natural world and, incidentally, stirred interest in composing harmonious forms in the garden.
This awakening took especially firm root in Elizabethan England, which notably developed the idea that gardens were for enjoyment and delight. Echoing the Renaissance outlook, the mood of the period was one of exuberance in gardening, seen in the somewhat playful arrangements of Tudor times, with mazes, painted statuary, and knot gardens (consisting of beds in which various types of plants were separated by dwarf hedges). Flowers began to appear profusely in paintings and, as mentioned above, were used by poets in their verbal images.
This enthusiasm was accompanied by an earnest search for knowledge, and the period saw the birth of botanical science. A leading figure in this work was Carolus Clusius (Charles de l’Écluse), whose botanical skills and introduction of the tulip and other bulbous plants to the botanical gardens at Leiden, Netherlands, laid the foundation for Dutch prominence in international horticulture. The earliest botanical garden was that of Pisa (1543), followed by that of Padua (1545). The first in England was founded at Oxford in 1621, followed by Scotland’s first, at Edinburgh, in 1667. The gardens at Kew, near London, were founded almost a century later, in 1759. These centres of experiment and learning have contributed greatly to the art and science of horticulture.
The advances from the simple medieval style were marked and rapid at this time. The English statesman and scholar Francis Bacon could already, by 1625, advance a sophisticated and almost modern conception of the garden in his essay “On Gardens.” He saw it as a place that should be planted for year-round enjoyment, offering a wide range of experiences through colour, form and scent, exercise and repose. The flower garden, already well established by the early 17th century, was set against a background of tall, clipped hedges and neatly scythed lawns. The taste of the time, as contemporary lists show, was for perfumed varieties such as carnations, lavender, sweet marjoram, musk roses, and poppies.
The plant trade
As interest in gardening developed in Europe, the new trade of nurseryman was established, and the trade became highly important to the spread of knowledge and materials. By the end of the 17th century, nurserymen were relatively numerous in England, France, and the Low Countries, with keen customers among the nobility and gentry for all the exotica they could provide. The catalog of the Tradescant family’s private botanical garden in London listed 1,600 plants in 1656. A number of them had been brought back by the family from visits to Virginia. These early exotica from the New World included now familiar plants such as the Michaelmas daisy, the Virginia creeper, hamamelis, goldenrod, the first perennial lupine, and such fine autumn-colouring trees as liquidambar and the staghorn sumac. The work of the nurserymen thus spread new plants more widely and, as breeding skills developed, contributed to the acclimatizing of foreign imports.
Vegetables and fruits
The history of vegetables is imprecise. Though familiar types, including the radish, turnip, and onion, are known to have been in cultivation from early times, it is fairly supposed that they were meagre and would bear little clear resemblance to modern equivalents. The early range available to European gardens and, later, to those in America, included such native plants as kale, parsnips, and the Brussels sprout family, with peas and broad beans grown as field crops.
The Romans introduced the globe artichoke, leek, cucumber, cabbage, asparagus, and the Mediterranean strain of garlic to their imperial territory wherever these plants would flourish. Among plants imported to Europe from the Americas were the scarlet runner bean and tomato (both originally grown for ornament), corn (maize), and the vastly important potato. The numerous herbs in use were mostly native to European locations. One curiosity to the modern mind is that certain flowers, such as marigolds, violets, and primroses, were used as flavourings in the kitchen.
The cultivation of fruit trees was one of the most advanced skills and interests from the 16th century onward. Pride was taken in variety, and, judging by the opulent still-life paintings of the period, the quality was remarkably high. Among the challenges bravely taken up in the 17th century in northern Europe was the growing of orange and lemon trees, though this was done more for the pleasure of their evergreen qualities than for their fruit. The catalog of the British royal gardens in 1708 shows 14 varieties of cherry, 14 apricots, 58 kinds of peach and nectarine, 33 plums, eight figs, 23 vines, 29 pears, and numerous varieties of apple.
