Ancient Greek Greek Garden Design

The ancient gardens of rome and greece bring inspiration to gardeners everywhere and can add old world charm to contemporary landscapes.

Ancient greek greek garden design. Greeks learned to harmoniously combine the construction of cities with the natural landscape mutually supplementing each other. In ancient greece while gardens were not included within houses sacred groves and plants especially trees were ever present elements of the greek landscape throughout antiquity. Before the coming of proto greeks into the aegean minoan culture represented gardens in the form of subtly tamed wild seeming landscapes shown in frescoes notably in a stylised floral sacred landscape with some egyptianising features represented in fragments of a middle minoan fresco at amnisos northeast of knossos.

The minoan culture was the embodiment of carefully tamed wild landscapes stylised in rich and colourful burst of floral sacred landscape. Garden in ancient greece homer provides an image of watering a garden in the iliad book xxi. Few gardens have been recovered archaeologically.

As one who would water his garden leads a stream from some fountain over his plants and all his ground spade in hand he clears away the dams to free the channels and the little stones run rolling round and round with the water as it goes merrily down the bank faster than the man can follow. A greek peristyle garden constructed on the island of delos in the second century before the christ event was luxuriant with plants and watered by ingenious lead pipes hidden from sight. Landscape design of ancient greece vi b c.

Citrus trees were a must in mediterranean climates. Greeks created shaded areas with ivy vines for a cooling spot to rest in the hottest months. This garden would become very important to the future of ornamental gardening and the development of a roman villa over the next hundred years at this time the greek house reached the apex of its development as a peristyle house.

The intricate slab features a greek inscription that clarifies its origins and has been dated back to the second century ad. Much of our knowledge of greek gardens and cultivated flora comes primarily from literature and paintings. One often draws a sharp distinction between gardening in greece during the ancient greek period and hellenistic gardens constructed under the greek influence during classical times.

The garden in which the ancient greek slab was found. Greeks originally had characteristic tendency towards harmony with nature use of a relief as by topographical component and the landscaping design of ancient greece was characterized by considerably freer planning and structure of composition. The presence of a good combination of utilitarian religious and aesthetical features was typical to the gardens of that time.