[Herbalist] Re: Tussie-Mussies- Poesys, etc.

[Christine Seelye-King]

> I was just travelling, visiting cities.  City people buy flowers
> (and vegetables). I have yard enough to grow my own plants. But if I lived
in a rural area, I wouldn't bother with growing some of the things I do,
because I could gather them along country roads.  In sparsely populated
early Medieval Europe, you gathered flowers and herbs on the roadside, no
need to plant them.  What's the logic of gardens?  Did they develop because
people wanted to grow nonlocal plants?
> Agnes

The Arabs and other Eastern cultures thought a lot of gardens very early on.
The garden was laid out to resemble Paradise, with fountains or a symbolic
'tree of life' in the center, with paths leading in toward that feature.  I
would venture to guess that European gardens developed as a result of
contact with the Middle East (amazing what civilizing influences were
brought back from a war against 'filthy infidels'!)
Christianna