When you start pondering purchasing that lawn rake from the UK or marveling at that special lawn rake, don’t forget that it’s only recently that gardeners have had a chance to use fancy machines and garden accessories. Trimmers and forks are relatively recent inventions, but as you know, the practice of gardening is as old as Man. The activity we think of as an old familiar leisure occupation was already developing over 16,000 years ago.

In Egypt gardeners worked by a blend of practical reasons, spirituality, and pleasure. Customarily confined by stone walls, fertile grounds were filled with grapes, flowers, fruit and nut bearing trees, vegetables, and sometimes even fish ponds. While admittedly they ate most of this they also nurtured some plants to honor some of their gods. Temple officers also looked after other plants on nearby land. They were hardly the only culture to design early gardens. The list also includes the Babylonians, the Persians, and the Assyrians, and they often incorporated architectural projects of significant size into this landscaping. As you might predict, another civilization who practiced this would be the Romans — though the Greeks dedicated themselves to the potential for nourishment of their farmsteads rather than the visual. Though they had no access to garden forks or lawn rakes, these nations did employ quite the range of simplistic implements and aids akin to the spades and hoes gardeners rely on in the present day. Gardeners created them from bronze, stone, iron, copper… the ages of history naturally named for the primary materials being employed.

Progress slowed to a halt during the Middle Ages. Gardening was no different, but luckily, the monasteries kept everything that had been learned alive.

Gradually we rediscovered the occupation of constructing flower gardens for pleasure. Conventions began to emerge, a formalized structure controlling how the garden would, in the end, appear. Many excellent representations still stand — knot gardens and hedge mazes, created from labyrinthine textures and patterns. Rules like these aren’t still mandatory, so there’s really no reason to feel nervous — have fun, and don’t be embarrassed when it comes to searching for information on how to get rid of that irritating lawn rakes deformity or parsing some good garden spade reviews. Instead of abiding by gardening rules that were developed over generations, “Capability” Brown and those like him cleverly mingled structure and instinct by combining modern decorative pieces along the lines of columns with a realistic looking design.

Obviously, things have expectably evolved as time rolls on, but gardens are still popular for similar reasons to our forefathers’. Regardless, they’re always some of the most wonderful settings on earth.