The first Christians often felt themselves to be in conflict with the Hellenistic culture of ancient Greece and Rome; this feeling continued after the Emperor Constantine 1 ended the persecution of Christians. Constantine waited until his deathbed to be baptized, but by the time that his nephew Julian became emperor, Roman Emperors were expected to be Christians. Julian is known as "Julian the Apostate" because he rejected Christianity and attempted to revive Hellenistic culture (or, in the eyes of Christians, the old pagan culture). This revival failed, and after Julian's death in 363, Christianity became dominant in both the eastern and western parts of the Roman Empire.
Hellenistic culture didn't die with Julian, but it became increasingly under attack. In 415, the philosopher and mathematician Hypatia was murdered by Christian fanatics in Alexandria. After her death, professors of Hellenistic philosophy withdrew into Athens; the schools of Athens were the last bastion of Hellenistic scholarship. In 529, the Emperor Justinian closed Athens' schools of rhetoric and philosophy and pagans were no longer permitted to be teachers. After over a thousand years, the Classical traditions of Greek philosophy had ended.
You may be wondering what Greek philosophy has to do with Renaissance gardens; actually, there was always a close connection between Greek philosophy and gardens. Ornamental gardens seem to have been rare in ancient Greece; there were vegetable gardens, orchards, and sacred groves, but some of the earliest ornamental gardens were walks shaded by rows of trees. The most famous of these walks was in the Lyceum, which was the gymnasium and exercise ground of ancient Athens. Aristotle and his students habitually discussed philosophy while walking along the shaded pathway (peripatos) of the Lyceum, this is why they were known as the Peripatetics.
The Renaissance is often described as a re-birth of Hellenistic culture, but on its deepest level the Renaissance was an attempt by humanists to reconcile Christianity with Hellenistic philosophy. When the Renaissance began in fourteenth century Florence, humanists tended to imitate the Peripatetics by having philosophical discussions in gardens.
While gardens were closely connected with the Renaissance from its beginnings, Renaissance styles of garden design were slow to develop. There isn't a lot of information about fourteenth century gardens. One of the few surviving early Renaissance gardens is next to the Medici hunting lodge of Il Trebbio. This hunting lodge was remodeled around 1451 by Michelozzo Michelozzi and the garden probably dates from the same period. We know that this garden has changed very little because Giusto Utens did a painting of it around 1600. The garden is detached from the hunting lodge and consists of a walled rectangular enclosure. Uten's painting shows 8 beds in this enclosure and pergolas running along the long sides of the rectangle. Only one of the pergolas has survived, the columns are made of red semicircular bricks and support simple foliage capitals.
