34 ARCHAEOLOGY • March/April 2018
eople have created gardens across the world and through-
out time, and these spaces have been an essential part of
the human experience. Gardens such as Eden, and also
Gethsemane, where Jesus prayed and his disciples slept
the night before his crucifixion, are, to this day, regarded as
sacred. Gardens are also a key element in some of the best-known myths. One
of the Labors of Hercules required the hero to steal, from a place on the far
edge of the world called the Garden of the Hesperides, the golden apples that
the goddess Hera had given to her husband Zeus as a wedding present. The
palaces of the ancient Near East are known to have had spectacular gardens,
including the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the Seven Wonders of the
Ancient World, whose precise location is still unknown.
Beginning in the mid-twentieth century, archaeologists started to apply
the full range of methods available to
identifying and understanding ancient
gardens. As technology has evolved,
researchers have not only been able to
discover where gardens were located
and, generally, what they were used for,
but also to determine which individual
plants were cultivated and how long they
thrived. Along with written sources, this
has allowed researchers to see how gar-
dens changed over time and what they
can tell us about the people and cultures
who nurtured them.
Fresco, Villa Arianna, Stabiae, 1st century a.d.