“Delight comes from plants and springs and gardens and gentle winds and flowers and the song of birds” Libanios, 314 – c.393 AD
In search of paradise Melanie Horsey, of John Horsey Horticulture, brings you the history of gardens as a topic of wonder in our human story The word ‘paradise’ comes from the old Persian ‘pairidaeza’ meaning an enclosure, and was used to describe the hunting park of the Persian king. The word was then used in Old Testament Hebrew as ‘pardes’, meaning simply a garden or park, and into Greek as ‘paradeisos’. But there’s no doubt the first gardens were discovered, not made. Maybe a natural clearing in a forest, a valley opening up, or an island in a lake surrounded by trees – full of flowers, fragrant and bearing fruit. Garden history and garden art have always been closely linked as a cultural reflection of a period or area. The gardens of the East reflected Zen Buddhism and Taoism, while the Islamic gardens were constructed in earthly praise of the Mohammedan paradise.
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#SWIBTRIBE | ISSUE 3
