Juniata sentinel and Republican. [volume] (Mifflintown, Juniata County, Pa.) 1873-1955, 1880-09-29
Ancient Gardens.

On The sculp cured and painted walls
of tombs we get pictures of the gar dcns
of Egypt and Nile. A very convention
al garden, as might have been expected
in a country where all the laws of orn-
ament were dictated by the priesthood.
Set round about with rank and file Of
date and pal and sycamore, the tanks
of water that kept them green bordered
with vases in which grew tufts OF pa
pyrus, with a little door opening into
the vineyard in the centre, and canal
on one side of the quadran gle-these
were the gardens presided over by the
garden deity Khem, who was first cous-
in to Greek Pan. They liked flowers,
those old Egyptians; they took tribute
of rare plants from conquered nations;
spent as much money on the floral dec
ora ions of banquet as does Delmoni-
co, and 1t was they who first made arti-
fetal flowers called "Egyptiae. The
gardens OF Assyria and Babylon were
architectural in their character. When
Queen Amytis, homesick for her native
hills, declared to Nebuchadnezzer that
Babylon was stale, flat and unprofit-
able place, he made her hanging gar
dens, whose terraces, three hundred
feet high, overtopped the city walls.
Down by the Euphrates were the gar
dens where the Israelites sat down and
wept, but here, high in the air, were
fountains and music and seats and ban
quoting halls. People did not merely
make gardens, they built them.
Twenty-one hundred years before
Christ. Queen Semiramis built gar
den at The foot of Teeb, Bagistan,
twelve furlongs In compass, with a
great fountain in the centre OF it-a
garden so famous that Alexander
thought it worth while to 60 out of his
way to see il. And when the Greek
general Lysander complimented Cyrus
on the beauty of his landscape garden
ing at Sardis, Cyrus replied: sit was
let me say, Lysander, who measured
the ground and arranged all myself
and these trees were planted with my
own hand"
Gardens have been formal, conven-
tional, architectural, geometrical or
natural as the taste of the time and OF
the people dictated. Pliny had his
tragic and his comic villa. We have
detailed description of one of his gar
dens; the rows and borders of box cut
into grotesque shapes of animals
shrubs clipped short; trees tortured
into slavish forms; flowers planted in
letters forming the name of the master
or the workman; little obelisks at reg
ular intervals; statues rigid as Roman
soldiers, and in the midst of all that
formal greenery, little room where
PIiny used to lie and imagine himself
in the woods. The Greeks had their
sacred groves, with ''dense fiocks OF
winged nightingales," but their gar
dens proper were small, and the cui-
ture of flowers was mostly limited to
roses, violets, narcissi, iris and such
blossoms as were used for chapiets
They had the olive and the plane trees,
the latter held in such high esteem
that they were sometimes watered with
wine. The Pompeiian gardens were
in the center of the court; fragrance
and bloom shut into the heart of the
house. The Jewish gardens in Pales'
tine were in the suburbs OF the town
they had watch-tower and keeper
to guard them from robbers and dogs
they were apt to be quadrangular in
shape; in some such garden as thi:
Solomon walked, and studied trees,
from the native pomegranate to the
imported cedar, and delighted himself
with s'orchards of pomegranates and
pleasant fruits; campfire with spike
nard, saffron, calamus and cinnamon,
with all trees of frankince1se, myrrh
| and cloves, with all the chief spices.
In Jerusalem the rose gardens alone
were allowed In the city, but they ex-
ltUutu Dck OuU IL W -houHb NiA'Ss, oie
to-day eight old olive trees identify,
uncertainty. the disputed site of the
garden of Gethsemane. The gardens
of balsams and palm groves that An
tony gave to Cleopatra were atJericho,
and in the 40, 600 rose gardens of Dam
ascus was distilled altar of roses enough
to sweeten the Orient. The gardens OF
the ancients were not occupied exclu-
sively by flowers. The Emperor
Tiberius contrived with plates of tale,
instead OF glass, to have cucumbers all
toe year round, and every Greek and
Roman and Pompeiian garden had its
row of "vegetals." With the fall OF
Rome the gardens went to decay, and
gardening bid fair TO be lost art until
the monks, with whom the esthetic has
more than once found a refuge, re.
stored the old and pleasant places, and
kept the gardens until they bloc ned
out in the elaborate architectural
glories of the old Italian villas.