Roman Gardening and Its Influence

The source I looked at this week is Gardens of the Roman World by Patrick Bowe.  Although it is similar in terms of content with several other sources I have read thus far, Bowe's work is unique in its own way.  It talks about what and who influenced Romans and their gardening, while also discussing the many features of Roman gardens.  It differs from other sources in that Bowe gives his reader an idea of how Roman gardening differed throughout the Roman provinces and also how Roman gardens influenced gardens that followed the Roman period.  I especially enjoyed Bowe's great usage of illustrations from various Roman garden sites.  He provides pictures of paintings, mosaics, and gardens themselves in each section he discusses.

Bowe starts off by giving his reader an overview of where the Romans got their gardening ideas from.  He specifically lists the Near East, Egypt, and Greece as the Empire's main influences.  

Roman gardens were greatly influenced by the gardens of Mesopotamia of the 5th c. BC.  The Mesopotamians had court yards that were surrounded by trees and contained stone-edged pools and pavilions.  They also had flower and vegetables beds. (1) By reading my previous blogs, it is easy to tell that the Romans also used these features, although they might not have been identical to those of the Mesopotamians.

The Persians also influenced the the Romans and their gardens.  In their gardens, the Persians were known for their use of water canals or rills to keep their gardens hydrated.  The Romans later adopted this way of watering gardens, specifically by using narrow rills. These narrow rills were called euripes and they were named after the Euripes canal in Greece that separated the island of Euboea from mainland Greece. (2)

A Roman garden canal in the House of Loreius Tiburtinus, Pompeii, From Gardens of the Roman World by Patrick Bowe.

The Greeks, according to Bowe, were the most influential to Roman gardens in terms of architecture.  Since the 4th c. BC the Greeks used a colonnade to separate their gardens from their homes.  The Romans adopted this technique and the earliest example can be found in Pompeii from the 2nd c. BC.  The difference being that Romans renamed these colonnades and called them peristyles when in their town homes.  In Roman villas, the colonnades were known as porticoes.  The Romans also adopted the idea of decorating their gardens with Greek or Greek inspired sculpture.  This became very popular after the Romans conquered Greece in 146 BC because many Greeks emigrated to Rome and brought their garden ideas and art with them.  Interestingly enough, gardens and gardening ended up being more popular in the Roman Empire than they were in Greece. (3)

Last to influence the Romans were the Egyptians.  An important aspect of Egyptian gardening that was appreciated by the Romans was their irrigation system which was very sophisticated.  Important to note is that the Egyptians also terraced their gardens and did so way before the Assyrians and their Hanging Gardens of Babylon.  The Romans adopted the Egyptian symmetrical layout of gardens, their water features, colorful pavilions, and avenues of trees.  The Roman gardens which contained an atrium (gardens in internal courtyards) were also an Egyptian byproduct.  Just like they did with Greek statues, the Romans also imported Egyptian statues after their takeover of Egypt at 30 BC. (4)

Ornamental gardens also slowly became popular in the Roman Empire with the earliest known example being in Syracuse, Sicily during the 3rd c. BC.  Gardens became so popular that Heron II, ruler of Syracuse, had one on his boat so he could enjoy it while at sea.  The  peak of classical gardening in Italy occurred from 150 BC to AD 350. (5)

During the Roman Republic (ca. 150-27 BC), gardens shifted from being something of private use to something for public pleasure.  In the early Republican period, gardens were small and mainly used for produce, in order to feed families, but by the end of the period they became ornamental and larger.  Emperors began to annex gardens for their own use and later in life they would will them to public use.  In the Roman Empire (27 BC-ca. AD 350) gardens became more luxurious, while much of the upper-class citizens tended to have them. The same families also owned more than one villa, which meant they owned more than one garden.  Why did they own multiple villas/gardens? Because they spent time at a different villa every season. (6)

Among the sources Bowe lists that give us an idea of what Roman gardens were like are literary source, archaeological evidence, pictorial records, and horticultural traditions.  

For literary testimony he lists the following:  Cato the Censor's (234-149 BC) De agricultura, later renamed De re rustica; Varro's (116-27 BC) De re rustica; Columella (c. mid-1st AD) De re rustica; and Palladius' work.  Another important work he notes is Pliny the Elder's Historia naturalis (an encyclopedia on gardening).  Although these works are useful in telling us the types of plants and flowers Romans planted and how they took care of them, they do not tell us much about design and decoration. (7)

Architectural evidence on the other hand gives us an ample amount of info on design as well as planting.  Much of this evidence comes from Herculaneum and Pompeii because of how well the area was preserved by ash and capilli after the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD.  Pictorial records come two-fold: through frescoes and landscape themes.  Frescoes that survive depict garden and rural landscapes.  Garden themes were illustrated on the inside or outside of house walls, and on walls that surrounded gardens.  Romans also painted murals inside their homes to give their homes an outdoor feel.  Landscape themes depict rivers, mountains, woodlands, caves, and springs, but also man-made things. (8)

Fresco from the House of the Golden Bracelet, Pompeii, discovered in 1979.  From Gardens of the Roman World by Patrick Bowe.

Bowe claims lastly that horticultural traditions are good sources of the way Roman gardens were planned and functioned.  For instance, many of the same practices of the Romans are still practiced today.  The tools we use for gardening today are also very similar to those the Romans used to take care of their gardens. (9)

The garden had many purposes and functions.  One was that of pleasure, somewhere to relax and enjoy the outdoors.  Another was health and exercise.  Many gardens incorporated baths, gymnasiums, stadiums, and hippodromes in order for the Romans to take care of their physical health.  Romans also walked together and read to one another in their gardens in order to keep themselves physically and mentally healthy. (10)

Bowe mentions two different types of garden designs that the Romans used.  One was the enclosed type, where there was a building that surrounded the garden entirely or partially.  The other type was the open garden that surrounded a building entirely.  The latter of the two was used for suburban or rural villas with views of the surrounding countryside. (11)

Bowe also discusses garden buildings and structures.  The first he discusses are altars and shrines.  Religion was very important to the Romans and so having altars and shrines in their gardens only seemed appropriate.  The most popular or widely used were lares (household gods).  Some examples are Ceres (goddess of agriculture), Flora (goddess of flowers), and Pomona (goddess of fruit and orchards).  Larger gardens also contained prospect towers, called belvederes in modern times.  These prospect towers allowed for a "birds-eye view" of the garden as well as a nice resting place (since it was high up, it was also very cool during the summer).  Many gardens also contained arbors and pergolas.  Arbors were open structures that were used for shade where people could rest and dine.  These tended to be made out of stone or marble, but more commonly brick or timber.  Pergolas were also open structures that provided shade for people walking throughout gardens. (12)

Reconstructed fresco from the House of the Amazons, Pompeii.  From Gardens of the Roman World by Patrick Bowe.

Garden sculpture was also very popular with there being religious and semi-religious sculptures, secular sculpture, decorative, fountain, and herms.  Religious sculpture included deities while secular sculpture included famous rulers, sculptors, philosophers, writers, or characters from popular dramas.  Decorative sculpture consisted of low-relief carvings on garden vases, bowls, tables, or couches.  Fountain sculpture was that of river gods, sea nymphs, Venus with her shell, seashells, marine creatures, fish, and dolphins.  Dolphins were the most popular.  Herms tended to be stone or bronze busts of human heads that were usually placed on top of a short pillar. (13)  

Gardens also varied depending on where they were.  There are three types Bowe addresses: city gardens and villa gardens.  Much of what we know today about city gardens comes from what is preserved at Herculaneum and Pompeii.  City gardens contained an impluvium, a space that collected rainwater that fell through the atrium.  This water was stored in a cistern and used for daily household needs during dry seasons.  These storage cisterns became less popular as aqueducts and public water became increasingly available.  These gardens were very symmetric and were planned on an axis.  The majority of the sculpture used in these gardens is decorative as illustrated below. (14)

Decorative sculpture in the House of the Stags, Herculaneum.  From Gardens of the Roman World by Patrick Bowe.

Villa gardens were the second type of garden Bowe discusses.  In the Early Republican era the owners of villa gardens planted simple crops, whether that would be flowers, veggies, and fruit.  There were three types of villa gardens.  The first was the suburban villa that became popular during the 2nd century and were located outside the city walls.  They differed from city homes because city homes had a front that led to the atrium and then to a peristyle in the back of the home.  The suburban villa's front open directly to the peristyle and then led to the atrium; the opposite of a city home.  By the end of the Republican era (27 BC) wealthier families began to purchase agricultural estates and built their homes on farms, which became known as the country villa. (15)

The country villas was similar to the city house because it had internal courts and gardens that were planned on an axis and were symmetrical.  The arrangement of the rooms in the villa differed because there was more space and more freedom to place things wherever the owner wanted.  These villas had an agricultural estate surrounding them, and in the distance they were surrounded by mountains or hills.  Those who built such villas tended to hunt, relax, eat, study, and drink on their free time.  These villas had cypress trees planted around their gardens to protect the plants from dangerous winds and to provide them with shade from the hot summer sun.   As aqueducts became more and more popular, country villas began incorporating pools, fountains, and fishponds.  Some fishponds were so large that they became commercial fish farms.  (16)

Romans also incorporated their gardens in public parks; we speculate they got this idea form the Ancient Greeks and their Athenian Agora (market place).  Many of the wealthier, upper-class men usually willed their gardens for public use.  The majority of these public gardens were attached to public buildings like temples, baths, or theaters.  The first public park that is recorded is Pompey's Portico (55 BC) that is located in front of Pompey's Theater.  Another area where Romans planted gardens was the market.  These gardens would then provide produce to the market to be sold. (17)

The Romans did not only practice their gardening techniques in Rome and Italy, but also in the provinces they conquered.  The Romans conquered much of the Eastern Empire during the 2nd c. BC and it included modern-day Greece, Turkey, Syria, and parts of Arabia.  The Romans did little to impose their culture on the Greeks and instead took many of their ideas, one being the peristyle garden.  In 146 BC the Romans conquered parts of Northern Africa, which included modern-day Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and Libya.  Africa was important to the Romans for its sources of food like wheat, corn, barley, olives, and wine.  In Africa the Romans had to accommodate to the slightly different climate.  For example, the water cisterns in the African gardens were larger to store more water due to the hot weather.  Homes were also different in that they had two floors, one at ground-level and another below ground-level) because of the hot weather.  Garden sculpture also differed to reflect the cultures the Romans conquered, as illustrated below. (18)

White marble dolphin statue from Sabratha, Libya, in Gardens of the Roman World by Patrick Bowe.

These Roman Gardens left a long lasting impression.  The cultures that followed that of the Romans' would always use Roman gardening as their basis.  For example, one of the earliest influences the Romans had was on the Byzantine Empire, after Emperor Constantine moved the capital to Constantinople in 330 AD.  None of the Byzantine gardens survive, but much of what we know comes from images that do survive.  Garden images in the Byzantine had Biblical themes.  Frescoes show that the gardens had colonnades, but were much more elaborate than those of the Romans.  Similar to Roman gardens, Byzantine gardens also contained fountains.  Islamic gardens were subsequently influenced by Byzantine gardens.  Ancient Roman and Greek texts on gardening were translated to Arabic between the 8th and 12th centuries.  The most popular topic was hydraulics, which allowed Islamic gardens to build pools, canals, and fountains.  One similarity between Roman and Islamic gardens is that the Roman peristyle was surrounded by a continuous covered colonnade, while the Islamic peristyle was surrounded by a continuous covered arcade.  In the Middle Ages, Medieval gardens were surrounded by a continuous covered vaulted corridor called the "cloister."  Medieval garden architecture, however, had little in common with that of Roman garden architecture.  At the same time, medieval gardeners did turn to Roman texts by Pliny the Elder, Varro, Columella, and Palladius, for guidance. (19)

Bowe does a good job at explaining the various aspects of Roman gardens and gardening.  I think he does an excellent job in giving readers a chronological sense of what came before and after Roman gardens.  He is the only author from the sources I have look at so far that discusses the influence of Roman gardens both during the Roman period and after. I also enjoyed the abundance and variety of illustrations he provides in his book; I think they were all excellent and really help in understanding Roman gardens.
1. Patrick Bowe, Gardens of the Roman World (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2004), 3.
2. Ibid., 4.
3. Ibid., 4.
4. Ibid., 4.

5. Ibid., 5.

6. Ibid., 7.

7. Ibid., 8.

8. Ibid., 8-9.

9. Ibid., 13.

10. Ibid., 13-14.

11. Ibid., 14.

12. Ibid., 22-28.
13. Ibid., 34-37.
14. Ibid., 76-92.
15. Ibid., 94.
16. Ibid., 96-102.
17. Ibid., 107-109.
18. Ibid., 111-128.
19. Ibid., 141-145.

2.