New ways - old ideas

Clothes, climatic and economic expectations, and garden practices: all vary with time, and sometimes with great speed. Gardening reflects our thoughts on food and fashion too. Many of the design ideas we employ today have been recycled over the centuries and we can appreciate past and present gardening accomplishments and find varieties of hardy plants developed in Canada utilizing the information and illustrations on the internet.

Identifying suitable and economically viable materials for our specific environment is important. Protection from animals - or wind and sun - is key. Stone walls were used 5,000 years ago in the Middle East whereas now in Calgary we may use roses or cotoneaster hedges as a cost effective alternate. The further we go back in time, the more basic the needs were. Originally the focus was food: over centuries, some powerful families could afford “exotic” decorative plants and pots; for instance the pharaoh Hatshepsut and her hubby Thutmosis imported rooted frankincense and myrrh from near Somalia (I wonder, would anyone condemn them for delighting in alien plants).The more affluent the gardener, the more spectacular the material: contrast Roman or Greek mosaics for instance with the cement pavers that we may use.

Economics produce their own consequences, positive and negative: How starry eyed were the tulip collectors before the crash of 1637 in Holland? The advances of the industrial revolution in the 19th Century brought the introduction of accessible gardening magazines and manufactured goods including mechanical lawnmowers, and different gardening practises. Clearly for some groups the affluence of the last two centuries has had major impact as gardens went from food producing (especially in times of war) to becoming decorative additions to properties.

Design ideas vary hugely with time and physical and political circumstances, and are often recycled. Compare Beaulieu Gardens at Lougheed House with the Reader Rock Gardens: both styles were inherited from Europe, but with very different scenarios. One fashion of the last decade has been the integration of inside and outside living but this is also recorded after the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79 in the colonnades of Pompeii. Similarly the delightful waterways of the 14th and 15th Century Islamic gardens of the Alhambra and Generalife exemplify this integration. Changes in attitude are interesting, for instance, the geometric designs of André Le Nôtre’s Versailles were exported throughout Europe, then a century later in post Revolutionary times the French wanted none of the old “politically incorrect” designs, but happily imported English practices that had evolved over that time.

Our garden world has benefitted tremendously from explorers. Alexander the Great sent back plants to Aristotle, and later, Europeans brought back new plants from Asia, and the Americas. The “Grand Tour” European and American travellers of the 18th  and 19th Centuries returned with new ideas. Currently we see old railway and industrial tracts in Europe and the US being renewed as gardens (check out the Promenade Plantée in Paris). We also see the rapid transfer round the world of new ideas, such as the re-introduction of Prairie Grasses into Western European gardens - even to the Prairies; and the most recent export from France, the vertical gardens of Patrick Blanc. Perhaps Blanc got the idea from the Hanging Gardens of Babylon! Personally, I’m happy to take good ideas from anywhere and from any era and put them to good use in Calgary. The more extensive our background and the more optimistic our outlook, the broader our gardening palette: start with a good idea, then edit it for the necessities of Prairie gardening.

Glynn will garden and consult (for food).


Patric Blanc's Vertical Garden at the Musée du Quai Branly