Just as the Great Inca turned the first furrow for the planting of corn with a golden plow, so the emperor of Japan executes the primal gesture of the ruler as gardener-cultivator by entering the imperial rice paddy each spring to plant rice, a symbol of the nation's historic dependence on the success of the annual crop. Aside from the metaphysics of princely horticulture, royal gardens and parks have been established as manifestations of earthly political power in every civilization. Social order emerges with the concentration of power and ceremony in the hands of a ruler. Hierarchy imposed on chaotic, formless nature as a new way of organizing the world was a visible element of the mystique of kings. The theme of the garden as a tool of statecraft runs deep, as we will see, throughout the long history of gardening.
Ancient literature takes it for granted.
Renaissance rulers, from upstarts in Tuscany to the kings of France, adopted gardening as a link to the Golden Age of Alexander the Great. Contemporary love of gardening in this urban century is a phenomenon that has spread widely, even though the threads that connect it with its historic roots are lost to all but the specialist. Even the simplest form of gardening is a particular kind of human experience that hints at a long and glorious past, both material and spiritual, but a sense of this continuity seems to elude us. When gardens with their sticks and stones and leaves of nature do rise above honest craft and are recognized as works of art, they become a part of the continuous process that all art shares. The antecedents that shape our appreciation of gardens include not only the historical past but the common biological heritage of our five senses, which have hardly changed since prehistory.