Ancient Roman Gardens

Considering that we know quite a lot about Roman gardens near Naples in 79 CE, and very little about gardens throughout a vast empire which lasted for centuries, Farrar has done a magnificent job of combining information from ancient writers with the limited archaeological evidence to present a detailed picture of Roman gardens.

Republican Rome didn't approve of ornamental gardens, Farrar points out that they didn't even approve of the exotic plane tree, which was planted for shade and didn't produce edible fruits and nuts. Because gardens only became ornamental during the last years of the Republic, and earlier gardens were so closely related to agriculture, which didn't leave formal patterns for archaeologists to discover, the information about early Roman gardens is almost entirely from ancient writers. Even during the Imperial period, most of the archaeological evidence for orchards, commercial flower gardens, vineyards, and fruit and vegetable gardens comes from Pompeii.

Because it is easier for archaeologists to recognize the formal patterns of ornamental gardens through the remains of walks, the darker colored soil of planting beds and the positions of post holes, Ancient Roman Gardens is primarily about formal gardens, even though ancient sources tell us that Imperial Romans also created informal landscape gardens. Farrar points out that the cost of large archaeological excavations have discouraged archaeologists from doing digs which might uncover the remains of landscape gardens.

So, while the science of garden archaeology is still in its infancy and there may be groundbreaking discoveries in the future, Farrar has done an excellent job of presenting in ten chapters what was known about Roman gardens when her book was published.

Chapter One: HISTORICAL BACKGROUND traces the tradition of gardens from its beginnings in Egypt and Mesopotamia through the Greeks and Persians to Ancient Rome.

Chapter Two: ROMAN HOUSING AND THE GROWTH OF THE GARDEN connects Roman gardens to the characteristic houses of ancient Rome: rustic villas, urban villas, suburban villas, and town houses.

Chapter Three: ARCHITECTURAL FEATURES IN ROMAN GARDEN DESIGN is particularly rich in information, because so much which has survived is architectural.

Chapter Three: ORNAMENTAL POOLS gives detailed information about water supplies, pool construction, the keeping of fish, and how different pool shapes were fashionable during various periods.

Chapter Four: FOUNTAINS AND FOUNTAIN FIGURES explains how Roman pipes would not allow high jets of water, because pipes would leak under high pressure. This chapter gives lots of information about how Roman fountains functioned and the

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