Covering Garden Spade Handles
Friday, October 29th, 2010Ultimately, any gardener starts looking to buy garden tools or perhaps marveling at those Alan Titchmarsh garden forks — but of course, it’s taken centuries to reach this level. Rakes and secateurs are relatively late innovations, but let’s not forget, the practice of gardening is as old as humanity. What is now a common hobby first began before the beginning of recorded history. The Egyptians took care of gardens for pleasure, for spirituality, and for practical reasons. The vital vegetables and similar edible vegetation would mingle with pools for fish. Admittedly the bulk was for food but they also grew some plants to honor certain deities. Temple functionaries also looked after various roots on nearby land.
Babylonians, Assyrians and Persians combined vegetables, flowers, water features, and fruits with nuts and stunning architecture to design splendid park lands. As you might predict, another culture who practiced this would be the Romans — though the Greeks concentrated on the potential for nourishment of their farmsteads rather than the esthetic.
While we grant you they may not have used garden forks or rakes, these civilizations had invented quite the range of elementary tools and garden utensils similar to the spades and hoes gardeners rely on today. Spades were simple stone things to begin with, but later pieces used copper, iron, and bronze. Progress was forced to a halt during the Middle Ages. Gardening was no different, but luckily, the priests practiced what had been learned. Bit by bit we rediscovered the occupation of constructing flower gardens to enjoy. Conventions began to evolve, a formalized structure governing the way the garden should, in the end, turn out. You’ve only got to look at the artistry inherent in a knot garden or hedge maze to realize this.
Such rules aren’t still the be-all and end-all, and as such there’s ultimately no reason to fret — enjoy yourself, and don’t be embarrassed when it comes to musing on how to remediate some irritating lawn rakes deformity or browsing some in-depth water features review. William Kent and others examined the traditions — so set by that point as to be effectively fossilized — and ignored those that detracted from their plans, blending a realistic outlook with carefully selected statuary and other such decorative touches. Today, gardens may look quite different but nonetheless we tend plants as our ancestors used to. You’d be hard pushed to find a more relaxing area than a garden paradise.
