History of Gardening

A Park Seed co-worker and I were discussing gardening the other night, at midnight, while we were wandering around in Walmart looking for curtains. He said to me, “You know, planting things because they are pretty is a fairly new practice. Until recently, if you had any available land, you planted something you could eat or something useful.”

That seemed logical enough to me. Apparently, he was watching something on television about the history of gardening, and that's the tidbit he picked up. I can assume that before supermarkets and automobiles, it would be beneficial to grow things that would otherwise be hard to get.

But, I think the assertion that gardens for aesthetics purposes is a recent development is total nonsense. What about the Babylonians, the Egyptians, the Greeks, or the Japanese. There are gardens in Japan that were designed and built hundreds of years ago that are still maintained. Over five thousand years ago, the Egyptians had walled gardens with shallow fish ponds.

It seems ridiculous to consider gardening for pleasurable or aesthetic purposes a recent event, unless you are speaking in the context that, in the history of earth's existence, humanity is a recent occurrence. But, I don't think that is what this statement means. The only way I can understand it, would be in context of the European expansion into the new world. The pioneers, heading west and blazing trails, had no time for frivolous rose gardens. They were struggling just to maintain some semblance of civilized life. So, until the last hundred years or so, most of North America would be hard pressed to tend to some plant that wasn't going to give them food, clothing, or shelter. In that since, in recent American history, I can seed how growing a purely recreational garden might be a late development.

It doesn't seem like a sacrifice, however. The American pioneers weren't giving up a right or necessity, but taking on a much more important project. Maybe the continent-taming tendencies, the essence of technological advancement, humanity's triumph over his environment is inherent. We can no longer surge into the wilds, muskets blaring and axes swinging, so we march onto or lawns with a rake and spade and tame what little flora we can fit onto our suburban lot. It may not tame wild territory for future generations, but we continue to blaze because we must.

Thomas
Park Seed Company