Really, as a gardener we’ll find you looking to buy Bramblecrest Furniture in the UK or alternatively checking out those Alan Titchmarsh garden spades – but let’s not forget, only over much of human history have we hit a point where you can. Trimmers and shears are relatively new developments, but as you’re aware, gardens are as old as humanity. Your leisure occupation traces its roots back to the cradle of civilization itself.

Primitive gardeners were guided by a mix of pleasure, practical reasons, and spirituality. The important vegetables and other food-bearing plants would grow around pools for fish. Certainly they consumed most of the produce but some plants were nurtured to honor some of their deities. Still other roots, important to the priests for magical purposes, flourished elsewhere.

They weren’t the only nation to develop early farmsteads. These include the Babylonians, the Persians, not to mention the Assyrians, who all also incorporated building projects of noteworthy size into landscapes. The Romans were another culture who truly delighted in tranquil gardens, but the Greeks were another matter. They grew farmland purely to eat. While they may not have used forks or rakes, these tribes had designed quite the selection of primitive implements which were prototypical of the spades and hoes gardeners rely on nowadays. They used stone, bronze, copper, iron.

Everything was abruptly halted under the pressure of the Middle Ages. Gardening suffered, but by good fortune, the churches kept everything that had been learned alive, ready for when they would again be needed by the wider world. Bit by bit we went back to cultivating flower gardens to enjoy. This movement continued up to the sixteenth and seventeenth century, by which time gardens were becoming increasingly conventional and precise. Some great exemplars can be found as knot gardens and hedge mazes, derived from intricate patterns and textures. Such rules are no longer compulsory, so there’s honestly nothing to worry about – have fun, and stay confident when it comes to hunting for tips on how to get rid of some vexatious garden forks deformity or reading some informative lawn rake reviews. Humphry Repton and those like him examined the traditions – so fixed by then that they were practically fossilized – and ignored those that interfered with their intent, mixing a realistic panorama with interesting statuary and other such decorative touches.

Certainly, the situation has expectably altered as time rolls on, but gardens are still loved for similar reasons to our ancestors’. Nonetheless, they’re always some of the most relaxing spaces in the world.