When the snow is knee high outside your window..

....it is high time for the gardening books! So now I am reading the impressive "Story of Gardening" by Penelope Hobhouse, an engaging tale of the development of garden design, "The Story of Gardening" brims with glorious full-color photographs, intriguing timelines and evocative narratives charting the history of individual plants. These are some of the pictures from the lovely book:
The history of gardening extends across at least 4,000 years of human civilization. Egyptiantomb paintings of the 1500s BC are some of the earliest physical evidence of ornamental horticulture and landscape design; they depict lotus ponds surrounded by symmetrical rows of acacias and palms. Another ancient gardening tradition is of Persia: Darius the Great was said to have had a "paradise garden" and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon were renowned as a Wonder of the World. Persian gardens were also organized symmetrically, along a center line known as an axis.

Persian influences extended to post-Alexander's Greece: around 350 BC there were gardens at the Academy of Athens, and Theophrastus, who wrote on botany, was supposed to have inherited a garden from Aristotle. Epicurus also had a garden where he walked and taught, and bequeathed it to Hermarchus of Mytilene. Alciphron also mentions private gardens.

The most influential ancient gardens in the western world were the Ptolemy's gardens at Alexandria and the gardening tradition brought to Rome by Lucullus. Wall paintings in Pompeiitopiary and cultivated roses and shaded arcades. Archeological evidence survives at sites such as Hadrian's Villa. The wealthiest Romans built extensive villa gardens with water features,

Byzantium and Moorish Spain kept garden traditions alive after the 4th century AD and the fall of Rome. By this time a separate gardening tradition had arisen in China, which was transmitted to Japan, where it developed into aristocratic miniature landscapes centered on ponds and separately into the severe Zen gardens of temples.

In Europe, gardening revived in Languedoc and the Ile-de-France in the 13th century, and in the Italian villa gardens of the early Renaissance. French parterres developed at the end of the 16th century and reached high development under Andre le Notre. English landscape gardens opened a new perspective in the 18th century. The 19th century saw a welter of historical revivals and Romantic cottage-inspired gardening.

In England, William Robinson and Gertrude Jekyll were strong proponents of the wild garden and the perennial garden respectively. Andrew Jackson Downing and Frederick Law Olmsted adapted European styles for North America, especially influencing public parks, campuses and suburban landscapes. Olmsted's influence extended well into the 20th century.

The 20th century also saw the influence of modernism in the garden: from Thomas Church's kidney-shaped swimming pool to the bold colors and forms of Roberto Burle-Marx. A strong environmental consciousness is driving new considerations in gardening today.

(Text: Wikipedia)