A Write-Up Pertaining to a Gardeners’ Heaven Garden Fork
July 9th, 2010 July 9th, 2010 Posted in Better Gardening, Tool Management, UnassignedComments Off
Every time you’re pondering buying garden tools or checking out those Bulldog garden forks, remember that gardening wasn’t always packed with garden accessories and efficient devices. Trimmers and secateurs are relatively new adaptations, but as you’re aware, gardens are as old as humanity. The activity we think of as a popular recreation actually began over 16,000 years ago.
Gardens at that time were tended to for practical reasons, for pleasure, and we shouldn’t ignore spirituality. Usually circumscribed by stone walls, green spaces were tended to produce flowers, fruit and nut bearing trees, grapes, vegetables, and often even fish ponds. Some of the garden was allotted for other things, holy plants seeded and cultivated for use in the temples. Temple officers, too, tended to certain plants in sites far from the gardens.
Babylonians, Persians and Assyrians put together fruits, nuts, stunning architecture, and flowers with vegetables and water features to create peaceful spaces. The Romans were another civilization who greatly enjoyed tranquil gardens, but the Greeks were a different story. They grew plantations exclusively for sustenance. To these early gardeners, spades and hoes were the fresh labor savers that garden forks or lawn rakes would become in times to come — and that’s before considering the kind of materials put to use. Gardeners put them together using bronze, copper, iron, stone… the ages of history match well to the raw materials being employed.
Everything screeched to a halt during the Dark Ages. Gardening suffered, but luckily, the priests practiced what had been learned, ready to be called on.
Bit by bit we discovered again the hobby of designing flower gardens for pleasure. Rules began to evolve, a formalized structure dictating the way the garden would ultimately appear. You’ve only got to think about the artistry inherent in a knot garden or hedge maze for that to be manifest.
Such rules aren’t still the be-all and end-all, meaning there’s ultimately no reason to fret — enjoy yourself, and don’t be embarrassed about checking out how to remediate that vexatious Bramblecrest issue or parsing some in-depth garden spades review. Instead of abiding by these conventions that had been studiously observed for centuries, William Kent and others innovated a unique mix of informal and formal esthetic by bringing together modern garden accessories like columns with a pastoral looking landscape.
Granted, the situation has expectably advanced as time rolls on, but gardens are still loved for many of the same reasons. Ultimately, they’re always among the most wonderful spaces on earth.


