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Greek Style Garden Ideas |
“I have called my own a garden, wherein I may rest in leisure of old age: its yields a harvest according to the season of the year: in spring roses, lilies, hyacinths, and both kinds of violets; in summer pears, and all the apples; and now the vine, the fig, the pomegranate, and the green myrtle. One might fancy it was a sacred grove.” – Longus, Greek Poet
When Alexander the Great entered Persia, Syria, and Egypt, he saw scenes of beauty as yet unknown to him. The worlds of nature and man harmonized, and to magical effect, in the idyllic and masterful gardens of an Eastern Mediterranean empire. Flowering fruit trees and cascading vines, shaded walks and shimmering fountains, all and more were to be found there. Alexander was inspired. The sight sparked in him a desire to recreate such verdant splendor in his home country of Greece.
Until that time, Greek simplicity had filtered out nature itself - or at least, had neglected to include it. Public garden parks were not a part the urban landscape in ancient Greece, although potted plants may well have been placed among the peristyles of private courtyards and between statuary. The conquests of Alexander the Great introduced the Greeks to Eastern garden culture, and it was from this period that the Greeks developed a keen interest in the horticultural arts.
The Eastern influence coincided with the expansion of Hellenistic towns into large-scale cities. Nature had become distanced from everyday life, and the Greeks yearned for its return. But the garden was also a newly found means of expressing wealth and prosperity. With dual motivations, the Greeks explored the concept of the town garden, the park, but also the planted private courtyard.
| Mediterranean Garden Design and Home Improvement | Mediterranean Home Improvement and Landscape Ideas, | Greek Garden Landscape |
Ancient poetry and literature provide some fascinating peaks into the leisure life of the Greeks. When it comes to gardens, the works of Homer and Longus offer a marvelous combination of fact and embellished fantasy. We see that more common than the garden park and the courtyard garden in Greek culture was the farm garden, a blooming field in which trees and flowers were planted at equal distances and set neatly in rows.
While Longus places a temple and ivy-wrapped altar at the center of his sacred grove, Homer describes a setting which quickly becomes considered by ancient Greek writers as the classical example of the romantic garden. Interestingly, divested of poetry, the landscape belonging to Alcinous in the Odyssey was a simple orchard composed of herb beds, two watering fountains, and an outer lying hedge. In the gardens of both Longus and Homer, similar flowers, plants and trees are found. Cypress, laurel, and fir stand with branches entangled in each other or entwined with ivy, all of which are surrounded by roses, violets, hyacinths, and narcissi. The Greek garden was also enriched by apple, fig, pomegranate, olive, and pear trees.
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