Garden

A garden is a distinct piece of land where they grow the plants under more or less intensive care with the help of gardening ( horticulture / horticulture). Unlike parks gardens are mostly used privately.

Gardens are not only created to serve a direct income to harvest ( kitchen garden ), but also an artistic, spiritual or therapeutic purpose, or even the leisure and recreation, such as ornamental gardening.

Etymology of the word garden

The German term derives etymologically from the garden of crop ( Indo-European gher and ghortos later). This refers willow, hazel rods or other, the sooner - intertwined - enclosed garden. The word gerd, gard called on gothic garde " enclosure " originally " the fenced ( with appliances ) terrain ," get in shape gate for " fence ", while that of a living fence encircled area in the word field Hag, Hedge can be found.

Medieval illustrations show also walled gardens. In this conceptual field of an Indo-European root infected cart ( o) " protection ", which in Latin hortus " kitchen garden ", French jardin 'garden' ( German but hoard ) OHG, gard, gart, Old Norse garðr ( " farm ", " territory ", cf Asgard, Midgard) in engl. yard ( " courtyard " ), skand. gaard ( " farm ", " farm " ) and Slavic grad ( " castle ", " attachment ", " enclosure " ), and indirectly of the Guard ( " Guard ", " protection force " ) as well as in proper names on - gard / t ( Luitgard, Irmgard, Eringard ) is obtained.

The word which in its present form underlying concept is " umfriedetes country for the purpose of cultivation of plants". The garden was under special legal protection ( Peace Garden ). Toponyms on - gard / t ( s), gad (s ) are derived from this context, but mingle with the Old High German word gadam " Gadem ", "space", "room ", " barn " ( Berchtesgaden ).

However, the definition of a garden is different in each culture, Western definitions and concepts should not be transferred without verification.

Garden types

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In addition to today often encountered form of a mixed garden, which combines many (ie mixed ) aspects in itself, a distinction is made in Europe, depending on the focus moderate use

• Household or kitchen garden,
• (formerly called Baumgarten ) the vegetable, fruit and herb garden,
• The Garden,
• The natural garden,
• The Botanical Garden,
• The experimental garden.

Ornamental gardens may be fenced or accessible public or private.

A large garden, which is not applied (only ) to yield purposes, but as an aesthetic object and entertain, is a park, even if has been preserved in the name of such investments, the word " garden " as the English garden.

Aesthetically landscaped gardens and parks get the name by

• Planting: rose garden, herb garden, perennial garden,
• Environment: desert garden, gravel garden, rock garden, shade garden, water garden, Tropical garden,
• Style: Persian Garden, Chinese Garden, Japanese Garden, Zen Garden, Baroque garden, French garden, an Italian garden, English landscape park, landscape garden,
• Design competence Topic: Bible Garden, artist's garden,
• Location monastery garden, cloister garden, castle garden,
• Users: cottage garden.

Planting

In a garden using crops (fruits and vegetables, and kitchen herbs, medicinal plants ) and ornamental plants. These include:

• Summer Flowers - One-year or two- year-old - blooming in the first or second year after sowing;
• Perennials - Perennial - go dormant in winter and grow from root, bulb or tuber again from;
• Shrubs - subshrubs, shrubs, trees ( deciduous shrubs and conifers) - deciduous, evergreen, evergreen;
• Container plants - frost- sensitive plants that need to hibernate in the house or conservatory.

History of gardening

Prehistory

It is believed that prehistoric cultivation until the introduction of the plow were very small and similar intensively with hoes have been processed. Amy Bogaard called this form of cultivation, therefore, as horticulture.

Horticulture in Ancient Egypt

Horticulture has been driven already in the prehistoric times, the rock tombs of Beni prove Hassan (Egypt), in which images were found by gardens.

Beginnings of horticulture in the Middle East

The Hanging Gardens of Semiramis in Babylon mythical Queen are known only from Greek descriptions.

Horticulture in early Greece

Perhaps there were gardens already in the Minoan period, as suggested by Siegel paintings and frescoes. From Homer's Odyssey is a continuous, regularly divided into fruit (and probably vegetable ) garden known. Homer's Odyssey never describes that fruit is eaten, and yet make a well- planned orchard for the poet pears, pomegranates, apples, figs, olives and grapes of course, a garden that would produce over a long period in fruit:

In addition to the yard is a large garden near the courtyard door At four acres, on all sides moved from the fence. Large trees stand in it in lush growth, Apple trees with bright fruit, grenades and pears And sweet figs and fresh green olives. Which never spoils fruit, nor winter and summer missing Throughout the year, but the steady Western whiff Drives out the one and leaves the other mature. Pear on pear ripens as zoom and apple on apple, but also grapes on grape and fig on fig as well. Homer, Odyssey 7.112

Sappho describes a bewässserten Baumgarten.

Plutarch states that Cimon the Athenian marketplace was planted with trees. At this university Hephaestus Temple planting holes for trees are archaeologically proven.

Beginnings of horticulture among the Romans

The sources for horticulture of the Romans are pictures (frescoes and mosaics), texts and the results of archaeological excavations available.

In Pompeii 625 gardens have been excavated. Wilhelmina F. Jashemski has more gardens in Tunisia and Algeria excavated, for example in Thuburbo Maius. She dug the 13 gardens of the Villa of Poppaea at Via Sepolcri out in Torre Annunziata ( Oplontis ). In plants, among other oleander, bay leaf and a lemon tree (Citrus limon [ L.] ) were detected. Even Roman flowerpots are archaeologically proven.

Among the most important written sources include the Natural History of Pliny. In addition to food and medicinal plants he also mentioned ornamental plants. Cicero, Ovid, Martial and Pliny the Younger describing gardens.

In Roman literature you meet from the end of the 1st century BC to a denser Garden discourse. The garden is a mirror of the mental attitude and thus of the social self-image of its owner. Elaborate gardens are a sign of increasing decadence for the Stoic Seneca.

The Romans separated kitchen gardens ( vegetable and fruit gardens ) from the Lustgarten. However, the Latin word hortus denotes both small private kitchen gardens and the surrounding imperial villas and publicly accessible terrain. Roman houses in Italy usually had an atrium in which plants grew. However atria lacking in other provinces, such as North Africa.

Pleasure gardens

Pleasure gardens were possible, was secured as a sufficient and constant supply of water in larger centers. They were used among other things for banquets.

From Greece the peristyle came to Rome, which disappeared by then usual small home garden. The rich put on larger garden ensembles in which wells, channels, caves and statues were artfully matched with each other and villa complexes formed a harmonious whole. Rooms that looked into the garden, were provided with large windows and small gardens by illusionistic garden motifs on walls visually expand, and vice versa projected into gardens by means of wall paintings in the rooms.

In the 2nd century BC the Romans took over the peristyle, a space surrounded by porticoes courtyard, from Greek- Hellenistic architecture and developed from the Gartenperistyl in which the colonnades surrounding a garden. In Conimbriga in Baetica, the garden of a Roman villa, the Casa was excavated and reconstructed the fontes. He illustrates such a system: A rectangular pond is surrounded by a colonnade of brick. In the pond are located on both sides of the longitudinal axis of three designed brick islands, which are planted with iris. A mosaic forms the floor. Elements of this garden were taken up again by Attlee in Portuguese mansions of the 17th and 18th century, at the Jardim Alagado about Jardim do Pacco in Castelo Branco and in front of the Casa do fresco in the gardens of the Palácio dos Marquis de fronteira in Lisbon but go rather Moorish influence on back.

Many villas owned several Peristyle, often paved in the living area on a Greek model and subsequently a larger Gartenperistyl. The garden of the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum in Italy, was reconstructed in the Getty Museum. This villa had two Peristyle, the larger was about 100 m long and 37 m wide, surrounded by 25 × 100 columns. In the center is a 66 meter long pool of water. The garden was the formation of numerous statues.

The profession of gardener ( topiarius, from Greek topos ) is known from the second half of the 1st century BC. Arrangements of shrubs and the cutting of plants into shapes and figures, the so-called opera topiaria ( topiary ) came on.

Urban gardens

Gardens of all kinds also fanned the cityscape. Among them were temple gardens as well as gardens in taverns. Even graves were sometimes provided with gardens.

In the city gardens were necessary to adequately let light into the building. The inhabitants of the insulae ( multi-storied apartment buildings ) often had to with the view of the gardens of other content, sometimes smaller strips of green spaces were created before the buildings.

Beginnings of horticulture in the post-Roman period

After the fall of the Roman Empire, the undefended possessions of the nobles were looted and vandalized in Italy, the country was built only for the most necessary needs, especially for food. During the reign of the Popes in the 8th - 12th Century the monks were almost the only ones concerned with agriculture and horticulture; Rich and powerful gave them to acquire forgiveness of sins, large areas of land with serfs and rewarded their work as farmers and gardeners. The peace was also expressed by the introduction of many alien plants from the Orient, especially by rich Venetians and Genoese.

France

France knows horticulture in the beginning of its history, only the purely useful, rises only slowly, to observe the flowers and reached very late in the aesthetically beautiful; every pleasant and useful product of the Agriculture and horticulture comes from the stranger, of the Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans and Saracens. Charlemagne ( 768-814 ) promoted farming, fruit growing and viticulture in every way, he loved the gardens and gave his gardeners like Verhaltungsbefehle. He stood in friendly relation to the Abbasid Caliph Harun ar - Rashid (d. 809), by which he is said to have the best vegetables and fruits.

Netherlands

The Netherlands is known for floriculture ( flower bulbs ), nurseries, and fruit and seed production for trade. The Dutch garden style was the precursor of Baroque gardens in the 17th and 18th centuries and influenced the French garden architecture. Mansions were built often surrounded with hedges, flowers, leafy walkways and canals. The flat landscape favored the system of regular beds.

The Victorian garden in England

In the 19th century, in which the civic sphere dominated the art and culture, people loved the rare plants. The gardeners were to amateur botanists and laid theme gardens, such as with Australian, South American and Asian plants in the plant hunters gathered around the world. The collection of rare species was more important than the artistic design of the landscape. So held, for example, rhododendrons, camellias and azaleas species feed in the gardens. Especially popular were topiaries, that is cut in the form of bushes and trees. In the garden of Levens Hall supposes you to be in an oversized toy land, so much dominate the cube-shaped, conical and spherical trimmed hedges. In the city of gardens they used especially now again popular flower beds, which were lying carpet shaped and in which the flowers were colorful ornaments.

A natural contrast to these highly ornamented gardens are the gardens of Women Gardeners as Gertrude Jekyll or Elizabeth Sitwell, which are based on the untamed splendor and simplicity of idealized cottage gardens.

Botanical Gardens

The botanical horticulture in Europe came only permanently in the 16th century, after the discovery of Mexico in momentum, and went initially from Spain.

Gaspar de Gabriel, a wealthy Tuscan nobleman, founded in 1525 the first botanical garden, soon to be the Cornaro of Venice, who was followed by Simonetti in Milan, of Pinetta in Naples and others.

1545 was approved by the Senate in Venice the facility of a public botanical garden in Padua, Pope Pius V had the set up in Bologna, the Grand Duke of Tuscany to Florence, and soon after had almost every major city in Italy a botanical garden. In France in 1597 botanical gardens were created.

The garden as an ecosystem

Gardens for biodiversity can have an important meaning. Their diverse structures such as hedges, bushes, fences, Asthaufen or single trees provide insects, birds and amphibians shelter and hunting grounds. However, the type of garden plays a major role. Cleaned out private gardens have a negative impact on biodiversity.

Came to this conclusion, the national Bumblebee Nest 2007 census in England, in which 700 volunteers have searched all nests in your garden. It turned out that gardens with many messy zones generally have more bumblebees. So it depends directly on the aesthetic sensibilities of the owner, whether a garden can serve as an ecological niche or not.

At least on paper, the knowledge has been reflected to the benefits of structural diversity. An example is the policy for allotment owners in Zurich. There it explicitly states: "The creation and maintenance of natural habitats for animals and plants (eg meadows, location- native shrubs, wild hedges, fruit trees, wet and dry habitats, small structures such as dry stone walls, cairns, etc.) is desired. "

But apparently it always comes back to the conflict between aesthetics and the needs of the ecosystem. Example, one study from the USA that the willingness to natural gardening strongly depends on the appearance of the garden of the neighbor. If this results in a clean cut lawn, you feel yourself obliged to do the same.

A study from Switzerland shows that species-poor and boring gardens are generally not rated as aesthetically pleasing. The agreement increases, however, the more colorful, more species-rich and wild is their appearance. But at some point tilts the rating again. Totally chaotic gardens is no nice. The ecosystem garden has at the present time seem good chance to be recognized as a habitat for plants and animals.