Talk:History of gardening

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The historical development of garden styles

         1.1 Ancient Near East
                1.1.1 Assyrian hunting parks and Persian paradise gardens
                1.1.2 Egyptian temple courts
         1.2 Hellenistic and Roman gardens
         1.3 Islamic gardens
         1.4 Chinese and Japanese gardens
         1.5 European gardens: Medieval
               1.5.1 European gardens: Italian Renaissance
               1.5.2 European gardens: French Baroque
               1.5.3 European gardens: Anglo-Dutch gardens
               1.5.4 Landscape gardens
               1.5.5 Romantic gardens
               1.5.6 Picturesque gardens
               1.5.7 'Gardenesque' gardens
               1.5.8 Pattern gardens: revived parterres
               1.5.9 "Wild" gardens and herbaceous borders
         1.6 Modern gardens
         1.7 Gardens in Poland
   2 Historic gardeners
   3 Notable historic gardens
   4 References
   5 See also
   6 External links

The above organization (copied here on 9 June 2006) merits re-consideration.

An obvious change would be to make 'Gardens in Poland' a subsection of European Gardens. Nor do I see why Hellenistic and Roman gardens should be separate from Europe. 'Islamic gardens' is a useful category but, unlike the greater part of the list is non-geographical (and it would fit pretty well into West Asia).

An extensive change would be to set up a world-wide geographical classification, perhaps along the following lines: 1. West Asia 2. Europe 3. East Asia 4. Africa 5. The Americas 6. Modern Gardens

Given the progressive internationalisation of garden design after c2000, Modern Gardens seems a reasonable category but people might wish to have other geographical categories (eg Oceania).

The classification of design styles should be within the geographical framework, as has already been part-done for Europe.

The lists of Historic gardeners and Notable historical gardens should probably be made into separate geographically-based lists. Comments welcome! Willow4

Good work, this page is a horrible mess, and I applaud any attempt at cleanup. A couple of comments - Islamic Gardens is a more commonly used term than 'west asian', and bearing in mind that Islamic Gardens appear in North Africa, and notably in Spain (Alhambra, Generalife, etc.) I think this is the better heading. A primarliy geographical list would be an improvement, but i feel it must make room for exceptions such as these. What about 'International' rather than Modern to keep the geographical theme? Or is that too vague?

I think the key thing is whether this is a list by style, period or region. At the moment it's a mishmash of all three. Perhaps geography first, then broken down into historical styles?

Yes, get rid of the listcruft at the bottom! There is already a List of gardens so this is probably redundant anyway, a List of gardeners doesn't seem unreasonable. Go for it Willow. ::Supergolden:: 10:45, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the comment. Maybe there could be a section on 'The Islamic gardens of West Asia' to get 'the best of both worlds'. Using 'Islamic' as a section heading would not remove the need for geographical headings (eg for Mesopotamia,Persia, India, etc). I think it would be OK to have subsections for periods and styles as we already have for the section on Europe. "Willow4 06:05, 12 June 2006 (UTC)".