NATIONAL GARDEN DAY APRIL 14

HISTORY OF NATIONAL GARDENING DAY

National Gardening Day was founded by Cool Springs Press in 2018 to celebrate the hobby of gardening and to encourage gardeners to share their expert knowledge.

Forest gardening, a forest-based food production system, is known to be the world’s oldest form of gardening. Forest gardens could be found in prehistoric times along jungle banks. Ancient Egyptian paintings from around 1500 BC provide some of the earliest evidence of people gardening for pleasure and to achieve an aesthetically pleasing outcome.

After a decline during the Middle Ages, cottage gardens became popular during Elizabethan times. These usually contained food and herbs, with flowers added for decorative purposes. Gardens gradually became more open plan and less rigid in their structure and by the mid 19th century in Europe, we were starting to see the types of gardens that we are all familiar with today.

The initial gardeners in the U.S were essentially harvesters. In the 17th and 18th century those lucky enough to own land and consequently a garden would try and use it to make money by harvesting whatever crops were suitable. Home gardening started to become a leisure activity in the 1800s as villages grew bigger and mass produce was beginning. Ornamental gardens took the place of edible gardens and research on plant diseases and pests began.

The last 150 years have seen gardens become an increasingly social space, with methods of caring for them evolving to provide gardeners with a much-increased body of knowledge and equipment from which to garden with.