As with all written histories of the garden, this one begins with the most ancient civilizations and thus dedicates much attention to the Roman Empire. is way, the ordinary has little that is ritual or can be foreseen and one can witness the true origins of gardens which arrived from western culture. ese origins were not lost in the centuries which passed by each other, but were a constant source of inspiration for the civilizations which came and went in the Mediterranean Basin. e Mediterranean, for an extremely long period stretching from 2000 BC to the late fourteenth century, was almost exclusively the scenery of western culture. Diverse peoples acquired economic and
political hegemony, they imposed laws, customs and artistic models which merged with pre-existing backgrounds and styles which then expanded throughout Northern European and African countries. Ideas from the East, such as science, religion and artistic models, filtered throughout the Mediterranean. Nomadic populations reached Mediterranean shores and so cultures and customs were brought together for several centuries in a relatively small circle.