Ancient Greek and Roman garden styles

Sacred places first, pleasure later. Both early Greek and Roman gardens intertwined these highly decorative spaces between divine tranquility, and a space for learning.

They were more than productive green spaces, there were philosophical sanctuaries.

Both cultures were open-air art galleries. Incorporating muses, decorative stone masonry, and mythical toparised shapes alongside practical and ornamental planting.

In Books 13 and 15 of Pliny the Elders encyclopaedias; Pliny offers a vivid, almost theatrical, tour of these green theatres, revealing how plants, architecture, and philosophy were intertwined to create the ancient equivalent of today’s urban park. Pliny’s Naturalis Historia does more than list plants; it tells the story of two cultures that cultivated not just soil, but ideas, identity, and a lasting love for the green world.

Both still maintained agricultural seasons for cultivated crops like Lactuca sativa, Foeniculum vulgare, Triticum aestivum and Hordeum vulgare - but planting now also had purpose and meaning. 

The Greek revered Laurus nobilis for its sacrality to Apollo. Later, the Romans adopted it as a symbol of triumph. Whereas Olea european were referred to as liquid gold. Beyond sustenance for both, olive oil was essential for cooking, bathing, medicinal purposes, religion and fuel. While Buxus sempervirens was highly valued for its practical, utilitarian and artistic applications.

Both the Greek and Romans transformed a practical function into a calming artistic, power display. The use of water was sacred for the Greek; it highlighted the love of harmony, beauty and mythology. While the Romans kept to the ideology of mastery over nature, they also demonstrated wealth by creating elaborate water displays. While both still served practicality; Washing, cooling, and irrigation. The gardens were adorned with still pools, bubble basins and artistic fountains. 

The Hellenistic style often had a grand scale, architectural integration, geometric layouts, themed and functional garden rooms. To not only provide produce and comfort anymore but to showcase the limestone carvings, gravel paths, terracotta pots, artistic fountains and the balanced, symmetric patterned planting.

Modern gardens still carry purpose and philosophy, being ecological labs and aesthetic extensions of the home.

Including eclectic geometry, minimalist lines that coexist with ‘wild’ planting schemes. We still dominate sustainable design using native and drought tolerant species. Heritage varieties alongside global exotics for colour, function and pollinator value. While water sustainability is a focus for modern designers, we still incorporate sculpture, water features, ponds and harvesting systems. While our ecological awareness, technology, materials and social accessibility have been re-interpreted, the legacy, influence and DNA of Greek and Roman Gardens still courses through our modern world.

History of Garden Design - Greece

(Time Period 400 - 200BC)  

Greek garden design rose from the farmers who worked in the valleys and, being isolated by mountain ranges, gradually developed their lands into city states. The soil was poor and it was only by irrigation and hard labour that they managed to cultivate crops such as grains and, eventually, decorative gardens. These green areas on the outskirts of Athens that grew plants other than crops became havens for those who wished to meditate or indulge in some philosophical thinking. 

By classical times, beginning with the fifth century, it seems that the Athenians no longer wished to retreat into the quiet shelter of private gardens. They preferred to congregate in large meeting places where they could discuss evidence and exchange ideas. The use of trees to enhance their stone public monuments and meeting places became customary and elms (Ulmus spp.),  aspens (Populus spp.), yews (Taxus spp.) and myrtles (Myrtus spp.) transformed meeting places into public parks. 

Fig 1. Bestravelvideo (2021) Thessaloniki, Greece March - 13 2021: Unidentified crowd on a park before the White Tower [photograph].

From Pliny the Elder’s Natural History encyclopaedia, published 77-79AD, we know that the many market gardens in the suburbs of Athens supplied the city with flowers and vegetables.  These gardens were enriched with the sewage of the city brought by a main sewer to a reservoir. Pot gardening can be credited to the Greeks, as Greek women planted quick-growing seeds of lettuce, fennel, wheat and barley in pots or shards for the festival of Adonis. Following their quick growth the plants withered rapidly, symbolising the early death of Aphrodite's young lover. The potted plants decorated statues of Adonis and were placed on the flat house tops during the period of the summer festival. 

Fig 2. Scaliger (2021) Pot gardening [photograph]

The Ancient Greeks borrowed from local plants when designing their buildings and garden surrounds. One such borrowed plant was Acanthus spinosus (bear's breeches), a clump-forming perennial whose deeply divided and spiky leaves were used as motifs moulded into Corinthian columns. 

Fig 3. Unknown (n.d) Corinthian columns [photograph]

We have the Greeks to thank for the first recorded botanic garden in existence. Theophrastus (371-287BC), a student of Plato and Aristotle and the father of botany, had a garden which was a collection of varied plants and trees. Although the plants varied greatly within the garden, they were actually positioned in a set order to aid their study by his friends and students. 

The legacy that the Greek garden leaves is irrigation, the use of trees to enhance buildings, container growing and the reflection or borrowing of plant shapes. Special note goes to the creation of meditation areas amongst gathering areas. 

History of Garden Design - Roman Epoch

(Time Period 300BC-200AD) 

Contemporary accounts of the gardens of Imperial Rome and the remains of the small city gardens of Pompeii reveal the first signs of true ornamental horticulture. Large or small, Roman gardens were laid out with a keen sense of design and scale, as well as a thorough knowledge of the kind of plant materials most suited to the pleasure garden. 

Previously, in the gardens of the Egyptians, Syrians and Persians, it was usual for food-bearing trees and useful herbs and plants to be combined with water and shade-giving elements to provide functional beauty. In Roman times, there appears to have been little compromise between usability and decoration. Herbs and fruit trees became incidental to the overall plan and the garden for food crops was usually a completely separate garden.

The gardens and flowers of Rome attracted frequent praise. In the first century CE, Martial described the city as being rich in “the beauty of spring and the charm of fragrant flora” and as having “ruddy paths twined with roses”. Gardens were held in such high regard, and their enjoyment was considered so important to the masses, that Imperial gardens were opened to the public and Caesar Augustus bequeathed his to the people. 

Pliny’s Estate of Tusci 

Pliny’s estate of Tusci lay among the foothills of the Apennines, where he found the mild summer weather delightful but the winter cold and frosty, a result of which was that myrtle and olive trees did not thrive. Laurel, however, grew plentifully. Pliny’s house faced south and its entrance portico overlooked a terrace. A descending slope (the Romans never had stairways in their hillside gardens) was bordered on each side with clipped animal forms and led down to a flat lawn area planted with ‘soft’ acanthus, a variety used as a ground cover.

This lawn was surrounded by a walk and on the outside of the walk there was greenery clipped into a variety of forms. The middle of the lawn was ornamented with box cut in numberless different features, together with a plantation of shrubs, prevented by the shears from shooting up too high. A fence covered with box (Buxus spp.) divided this from the meadowland. The inner walks were sunny and “perfumed with roses”. 

As Pliny wrote: 

Many paths are divided from one another by box (Buxus spp.). In one place you have a little meadow;  in another the box is interposed in groups, and cut into a thousand different forms;  sometimes into letters expressing the name of the master, or again that of the artificer;  whilst here and there little obelisks rise inter-mixed alternately with apple trees, when on  a sudden, in the midst of this elegant regularity, you are surprised with an imitation of the negligent beauties of rural nature; in the centre of which lies a spot surrounded with a  knot of dwarf plane trees. Beyond these are interspersed clumps of the smooth and twisting acanthus; then come a variety of figures and names cut in box. 

At the upper end is a semicircular bench of white marble, shaded with a vine which is trained upon four small pillars of Carystian marble. Water, gushing through several little pipes under this bench, as if it were pressed out by the weight of the persons who repose themselves upon it, falls into a stone cistern underneath, from whence it is received into a fine polished marble basin, so artfully contrived that it is always full without ever overflowing.

When I sup here, the tray of whets and the larger dishes are placed around the margin, while the smaller ones swim about in the form of little ships and waterfowl. Opposite this is a fountain which is incessantly emptying and filling, for the water which it throws up to a great height falling back again into it, is by means of connected openings returned as fast as it is received. 

Pliny’s full description makes it easier to visualise other large Roman gardens. He describes the development of the lawn and the advanced stage of the art of topiary. At this point let us make a quick note about topiary: About a hundred years earlier Cicero had said that the word topiaries belonged to the highest class of slaves. This was the word for the general ornamental gardener, while the aquarius was in charge of indoor and outdoor fountains. Gardening had reached a pinnacle of development by Pliny’s time and other writers describe hothouses or conservatories with windows made of thin talc or mica, where roses were forced into bloom out of season and foreign plants were nurtured. 

The Natural History written by Pliny’s uncle, Pliny the Elder, is a good source of information about trees, shrubs and plants commonly planted in gardens and promenade areas during the early period of the Empire. Thanks to Pliny the Elder we know that the favourite tree for the public parks was the vigorous plane tree (Platanus spp.), or sycamore (Platanus spp.), still frequently used today for street planting. Laurel (Laurus spp.) and myrtle (Myrtus spp.) were garden favourites whose leaves could be woven into crowns.  Pliny the Elder also mentions box (Buxus spp.) and ivy (Hedera spp.), ferns and periwinkle (Vinca spp.), and twelve varieties of roses (Rose spp.). \

There were violets (Viola spp.) (white, purple and yellow), hyacinths (Hyacinthus spp.), lilies (Lilium spp.), narcissi (Narcissus spp.), irises (Iris spp.), anemones (Anemone spp.), poppies (Papaver spp.), verbena (Verbena spp.), rocket, crocuses (Crocus spp.) and oleanders (Nerium spp.). Most of these were spring flowers, the Italian summer being too hot to encourage other blooms, therefore, variety of form and texture was always important to the permanent greenery of the garden. Many of the above-mentioned flowers were grown in private gardens and were abundantly displayed in the market gardens. 

In small city homes such as those excavated at Pompeii, the peristyle and atrium were combined into a typical style of almost windowless dwellings grouped around interior courts.  The usual place of entry was the atrium, which had an opening in the roof for light – originally to let out smoke. Underneath was a small pool called the impluvium, which trapped rainwater. As guests were received in the atrium, it was often splendidly decorated. A connecting hallway led to a large inner courtyard, the peristyle, traditionally kept as a private area for the family. This was surrounded by roofed, colonnaded walks, but the whole centre was open to the sky and made a natural garden site. 

Fig 1. Unknown (n.d.) Peristyle of the House of the Vettii.

Excavation sites at Pompeii reveal how charming and secluded these courts were [photograph] 

Garden beds in varying patterns and shapes were edged with ivy (Hedera spp.) or box (Buxus spp.) and planted with roses (Rosa spp.), hyacinths (Hyacinthus spp.), violets (Viola spp.) and other flowers. Small trees, remains of which are fossilized in their original planting holes, have been identified as pear, fig, chestnut and pomegranate. An elaborate piped water system fed the many fountains, jets, basins and pools. Bronze and marble statuary were popular decorations. 

At several houses, excavated garden areas other than the peristyle reveal what were once vine covered pergolas. A T-shaped one with a water canal makes the loggia at the rear of Loreio  Tibutino’s house one of the most interesting at Pompeii. Some houses also had rooftop gardens. The flat, sunny roofs were often planted with trees, shrubs and potted plants to make attractive solariums. Some had trellis or pergolas. These were the original “green roofs”, a  house-cooling style that has made a comeback in recent years as using gardens to conserve energy has gained popularity. 

The pleasure-loving Romans looked for new ways to satisfy their large appetites, long accustomed to the gratification of every luxurious whim. Pliny the Elder wrote of a huge plane tree with a trunk cavity large enough to be made into a covered grotto in which eighteen people could dine. Smaller grottoes were not unusual in the garden, some artificially made of tufa or pumice stone embedded with shells. Another plane tree with a dining platform built in its branches was the property of Caligula, who dined there with fourteen guests. The Emperor called it a “regular nest”.