When you begin considering buying lawn rakes made in the UK or marveling at some Alan Titchmarsh garden spades, don’t forget that gardening hasn’t always been filled with fancy devices and garden tools. Hoes and forks are relatively late innovations, but as you know, gardens themselves are as old as man. This hobby has history reaching back to the cradle of civilization itself. In Egypt gardeners worked by a blend of spirituality, pleasure, and practical reasons. The important flowers as well as other edible plants would grow around pools for fish, being enclosed by stone walls that also added layout. While admittedly the bulk was grown as food some plants were tended to honor certain gods. Priests also looked after other plants on nearby land.
Assyrians, Persians and Babylonians mingled together stunning architecture, vegetables, water features, and flowers with fruits and nuts to craft wonderful landscapes. The Romans were another people who truly enjoyed attractive gardens, unlike the ancient Greeks. Only food was allowed to flourish in their farmsteads.
In that era, spades and hoes were the modern, unfamiliar innovations that lawn rakes or garden forks would become in times to come — real differences even before examining the kind of raw materials used. Tools were simple stone things to begin with, but were made out of copper, bronze, and iron as time passed. The confusion following the fall of Rome drove several tribes to put down the basic garden fork and the rest of the garden tools — except for the priests, who grew certain flowers for medicinal purposes.
Slowly we rediscovered the hobby of engineering gardens to enjoy. This movement went on throughout the 16th and 17th century, by which point gardens were becoming much more established and structured. You need only to think about the artistry inherent in a knot garden or hedge maze for that to be plain. Such rules are no longer compulsory, so there’s really no reason to be nervous — enjoy yourself, and don’t be embarrassed regarding trying to find out how to get rid of some annoying garden forks deformity or leafing through some well written garden fork review. “Capability” Brown and those like him examined the traditions — so fixed now that they were effectively frozen — and discarded those that detracted from their intent, blending a naturalistic panorama with appropriate statues and similar decorative touches.
Yes, things have advanced as time rolls on, but gardens are still popular for many of the same reasons. Ultimately, they remain among the most wonderful places in the world.
