Garden Art in European Culture

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

Ornamental gardens are complex, three-dimensional, organic art forms that for over 4,000 years have also acted as cultural barometers. Down the millennia and across the continent of every European civilization and nation has developed its own garden styles. Over time and place, these styles have evolved in tune with changes in the cultural, artistic, social, economic, technological, and political landscapes. From peristyle courtyards of Roman villas to ascetic Medieval monastic gardens to erotic and sensuous Moorish paradises; from Baroque opulence to Arts and Crafts partisanship to ultra-Modern functionality. Garden art and European culture has always been and continue to be profoundly interactive. Each simultaneously shapes the other. Garden art is therefore an intrinsic, integral and influential component of the zeitgeist.