Ancient Roman Garden Design

Ancient roman landscaping is different from ancient greek.

Ancient roman garden design. Roman garden is a landscape garden design which was introduced in england in the beginning of 18th century. Gardens of ancient rome fountains were often the central feature of a garden which brought life to the straight lines and geometric shapes of the gardens. It is also called as english landscape park.

However by the imperial period any garden of significant size could incorporated plants water features and statues to create a carefully designed haven for the garden s owner. This book describes the variety of roman gardens throughout the empire from the humblest to the most lavish including such well known places as hadrian s villa in tivoli and the gardens of pompeii and herculaneum. Although possibly not the name of the garden owner and their gardener.

Topiary the art of shaping trees into fantastic shapes became very popular in roman gardens. A roman pleasure garden would boast several water features on the property. As roman culture developed and became increasingly influenced by foreign civilizations the use of gardens expanded.

It was seen as a place of peace and tranquillity a refuge from urban life and a place filled with religious and symbolic meaning. Topiary became the predominant pruning style showcased in containers featuring standard evergreens and shaped boxwoods. Water was prized in all styles of roman gardens by the ancient romans who were the aqueduct builders of the old world.

The roman was a very civilised civilisation and the garden was no exception. Roman gardens were either large estates in the countryside villa urbanae which evolved from villa rusticae on the outskirts of cities villa suburbanae or the hortus a relatively small enclosed courtyard gardens set within their urban town houses. The continued influence of roman gardens is traced though arabic medieval and renaissance gardens to the present day.

The landscaping of ancient rome was developed on the basis of the traditions of ancient greece. The gardens of lucullus on the pincian hill in rome introduced the persian garden to europe around 60 bc. Whilst i m not on a garden tour of rome i may spot a few examples of italian topiary as this style of gardening became popular again during the italian renaissance.