Any gardener starts considering purchasing garden equipment from the UK or maybe marveling at your neighbor’s Bulldog garden spade — but bear in mind, only over the majority of human history have we reached this level. Rakes and secateurs are relatively late developments, but as you’re aware, the practice of gardening is as old as man. What is now an old familiar pastime was already developing over 16,000 years ago. Primitive gardeners were guided by a mix of practical reasons, pleasure, and spirituality. Generally protected by walls of stone, fertile grounds were tended to produce flowers, fruit and nut bearing trees, vegetables, grapes, and often even fish ponds. While admittedly they consumed most of this they also tended some plants in the name of their deities. Temple functionaries also tended to certain herbs on nearby land. Assyrians, Babylonians and Persians combined fruits, flowers, stunning architecture, and vegetables with water features and nuts to create wonderful areas. The Romans were another nation who went in for tranquil gardens, though the Greeks did not. Food alone was grown in their farmland.
For them, hoes and spades were the new, recent labor savers that forks or lawn rakes would become for times to come — and that’s before you examine what they used for materials. They used copper, bronze, stone, iron… the famous eras obviously named for the primary materials in action.
Progress was abruptly halted under the pressure of the Dark Ages. Gardening was no different, but even then, the monks kept the old knowledge alive. Little by little we returned to constructing gardens to enjoy. This habit advanced right through the seventeenth century, by which time gardens were becoming increasingly formalized and structured. Many excellent exemplars include hedge mazes, which were inspired by elaborate textures. So if you’re musing on ways to mend some annoying garden spade deformity or studying some interesting garden spades review, remember that by the 18th century visionaries such as Humphry Repton, Lancelot “Capability” Brown, and William Kent picked up a garden fork and similar garden contrivances to create amazing landscapes. Humphry Repton and those like him examined the rules — so fixed now that they were effectively stagnant — and discarded those that interfered with their intent, mixing a realistic outlook with captivating statues and similar accessories.
Nowadays, their appearance may have changed but we still tend plants for much the same reasons. You’d be hard pushed to discover a more peaceful realm than a garden paradise.