History of Horticulture


This last week we covered the history of horticulture. Considering agriculture and horticulture are so intertwined our story begins at the dawn of agriculture 12-8 thousand years ago, when we first domesticated wheat.


There isn't much written record of ancient history until we get to the Egyptians, who through the use of Hieroglyphics and paintings have one of the most detailed record keeping styles of the modern world. Their largest use of horticulture was for the production of wine, (alcohol goes way back?!).

However we also see elaborate garden design for the very wealth Egyptians personal use. When we look at the next two big empires we see that the Greeks and Romans contributed to horticulture by their brilliance and their implementation. The Greeks made tremendous strides in medicine and botany and the Romans implemented the techniques of crop rotation and nutrient addition as well as “high density systems”.
With the dark ages we see not a halt in agriculture or technique but we see a shift to the religious institutions for intellectual pursuits. The renaissance brought new ideas and a new found vigor for ornamental agriculture, we see complex shaped gardens and new plants. At the end of the renaissance we see a shift from the importance of religion to the importance of reason, and as a result of this we see all of agriculture jump forward very quickly this momentum was carried forward into the 19th and 20th centuries.


 The invention of fertilizer and the understanding of nutrient needs paved the way for precision agriculture. This was an intense lecture and but it was something I had always wanted to hear, I remember talking with Dr. Getter for a class about the history of agriculture. Awesome stuff, I just wish we could learn more.
















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