Gardening

**Gardening Overview**:
– Gardening involves growing plants for various purposes like vegetables, fruits, flowers, herbs, and aesthetics.
– Gardens can serve multiple functions such as providing medicines, cosmetics, foods, wildlife habitats, and saleable goods.
– Gardening practices range from large-scale gardens like Versailles to container gardens.
– Differentiating gardening from farming is based on primary objectives, with farming focusing on saleable goods and livestock production.
– Some cultures historically do not differentiate between farming and gardening.

**Historical Development**:
– Prehistory marks the transition from hunting and gathering to modifying environments for edible plant abundance.
– Indigenous gardening methods developed independently in different societies, often overlooked by colonizers.
– Forest gardening is considered the world’s oldest form of gardening.
– Wealthy individuals in ancient civilizations created gardens for aesthetic purposes, as seen in ancient Egyptian tomb paintings and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.
– Ancient Rome and ancient Egypt had significant gardens associated with gods and higher social status.

**Indigenous Gardening**:
– Indigenous societies in the Americas have long traditions of gardening, utilizing diverse plant species for food and medicines.
– Northern and southern Indigenous groups developed unique food production niches using fire, sowing wild and domesticated annuals, and creating orchards.
– Many popular crops like maize, quinoa, and potato originated from pre-colonial Indigenous agricultural societies.
– Indigenous gardens in the Americas exhibit pristine beauty and serve multiple purposes beyond food production.
– Indigenous gardens contribute to aesthetics while producing foods and medicines.

**Cultural Evolution of Gardens**:
– The Middle Ages saw a decline in gardening for aesthetic purposes post the fall of Rome, with monasteries focusing on growing medicinal herbs.
– Cottage gardens emerged in Elizabethan times as a source for herbs and fruits, originating after the Black Death.
– Gardens in the 18th century were laid out naturally without walls, featuring lakes, lawns, shrubberies, and follies.
– Renaissance and 17th-century gardens were symmetric, balanced, adorned with sculptures, and featured knot gardens and hedge mazes.
– Ancient India’s influence on gardens is reflected in sacred geometry, mandalas, and intricate symbolic patterns.

**Evolution of Garden Styles**:
– The 18th-century English landscape gardens were characterized by Capability Brown’s influence, featuring lakes, lawns, and follies.
– The 19th century saw the emergence of the gardenesque style and rock gardens in gardens.
– Gardens in the Renaissance and 17th century were symmetric, balanced, and adorned with sculptures, fountains, and new flowers like tulips.
– European gardens featured different parts with flowerbeds, gravel paths, turf seats, trellises of roses, and lawns.
– Islamic gardens were influenced by Persian gardens, incorporating watercourses and mosaics.