The designed garden seems to be as old as recorded history. It is one of the earliest forms of art. In mythology, the garden appears as an ideal conception, a place for gods—the Garden of Eden, the Garden of the Hesperides, the Garden of Allah. Not many details of these gardens are known today; reconstructing the Garden of Eden from references taken from the book of Genesis would be all but impossible. We could deduce, rather than discover, what its aspect should be like. And they all had one thing in common: they were ordered reconstructions of nature itself, natural settings from which the element of fear had been removed and grew in the most perfect and pleasing manner, thanks to the laborious assistance of Man. Sporadic sources of fear are wild animals, reptiles, and spiders that attest, I would say, to the ideal conception of garden as a place where man exercises control over nature—or his friendship with nature, if you like—by recognizing his dependence on it. A garden is not simply the product of frivolous idleness; much less is it a magic mantle unfurled to cover defective proportions, contradictory masses, or badly planned volumes. A garden is, or ought to be, an integral part of civilized life, a spiritual and emotional necessity, deep rooted and profoundly felt. Early gardens were inevitably derived from their immediate surroundings. Their function was to sustain and preserve life. Even today, this is so in the Amazon forest or in Mato Grosso. Indians settle for a while, plant corn and grow vegetables. In the forest, they find magical and medicinal plants, stimulants, fruits and roots. But their lack of gardening technique combined with the habit of burning away undergrowth forces them to move on. The immediate success of established planting efforts often depended on gods of fertility; in Hispanic America today, Saint Isidore is called upon for help: “San Isidro, labrador, quita el agua y pon el sol” [Saint Isidore the Laborer, stop the water and bring in sun]; and even in countries of Protestant religion, their conscious and Puritan peoples often ask for a blessing to make their seeds grow. Yet the ancient role of the gods has increasingly been passed on to agronomists and chemists. With their assistance, the role of today’s gardener tends to be that of cultivating plants in places where they could not possibly grow on their own. We mustn’t, however, forget the humbleness of ancient cultivators: their gardens developed, and at the same time depended on, the surrounding vegetation. With settlements came fences, protection against an invading nature, and defense against hostile neighbors; and this has been a constant in the history of garden composition. Eighteenth- century English parks, seemingly part of the scenery, were protected
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from neighbors by distance and free of cattle and sheep thanks to “ha-ha” walls, or sunken ditches that kept them out. Spiritually, gardens were sanctuaries, sheltered from the wind, offering shade and relief for thirst and hunger. Even in the hanging gardens of Babylon, built in elevation, there was a gridded ground level. Gardens were purely architectural from the point of view of construction, although separate from residential areas and made to be contemplated from a distance. The plan of a garden at Thebes, Egypt (circa 1400 BC) was surrounded by a straight wall. It contained four water tanks conveniently located to irrigate in two rectangular pairs, and trees planted in lines and groves; and there were vines hanging from pergolas. The design was, however, elegant, and its balance carefully studied although not symmetrical, since the house was situated neither at the center, nor even halfway along one of the walls. Some of the plants may have been of some utility, but they posed more opportunity for contemplation when placed so close to the house. These plants gradually came to be appreciated for their appearance and offered design elements for the architecture, as well as for painting and sculpture, such as for the lotus flower or the acanthus leaf. The first public gardens were laid out by the Greeks. They were a sociable people with strong communal feelings and a love of discussion. From conversation in the street they went on to the marketplace, which they started to landscape in order to make a better use of space. Their origin was the sacred grove, always dedicated to a myth. In the case of the Academy, it was that of the hero Academus, in whose honor games were held that required training, which was undertaken in the woods. This consequently provided a spectacle. The building of covered walkways and baths followed; then came statues of victors, and all this led to a type of garden that, in essence, continues to exist today —based on the needs of a society, adapted to urban surroundings and landscapes—in a smooth, unhurried and rational course of development where function produces aesthetic standards. The Romans were better gardeners than the Greeks, and they enjoyed more favorable natural conditions. Note that the Roman deities Flora and Pomona had no counterpart in Greek mythology. They borrowed characteristics from Greek gardens: woods, lakes and colonnades, adapting them to urban gardens, more introspective, enclosed, and intimate. In these cases, gardens were often merely suggested in painting. They then developed a countryside garden, which, although basically consisting of an extension of the house, included a view of the landscape. It was still a refuge-garden, but unlike Islamic gardens (which faced away from the landscape, rejecting it completely,