GARDENING IN EGYPT.
The Garden of God.—_Ezekiel._
That horticulture was a favourite occupation among the ancient Egyptians
is shown abundantly by their sculptures and paintings. Representations
of gardens are so common, that we may infer that no residence, of any
pretensions, was considered complete without one. We even see that rare
and interesting plants, brought from Asia and Ethiopia, each with a ball
of earth round the roots, carefully secured with matting, formed at
times a part of the royal tribute. The very lotus, which may be regarded
as, among flowers, the symbol of Pharaohnic Egypt, is now supposed to
have been an importation from India. In this matter, as in every other
respect, the country has sadly retrograded.
Their style of gardening was stiff and formal. Straight lines were much
affected. Angles did not displease. Basins, or pools, of water were _de
rigueur_. Every plant, or tree, was carefully trimmed, and trained. It
could not have been otherwise. This was all settled for them by the
aspects of Egyptian nature, the character of their religion, and their
general manners and customs. As is the case among modern Orientals,
flowers were not valued so much for their form and colouring, as for
their odour.
The European of to-day, as he looks upon the sculptured and painted
representations of Egyptian gardens of three or four thousand years
ago, at which date his own ancestors were living in caves, from which
their ancestors had expelled races of animals now extinct, finds that,
notwithstanding the barbarism of his ancestors, and the recentness of
his civilization, there have come to be reproduced in himself ideas and
sentiments, which were giving grace and finish to the highly organized
society which had been established then, no one can tell for how long
a period, on the banks of the Nile. At all events he beholds in these
Egyptian gardens a curious instance of an interesting and instructive
similarity between the two; for he sees that the Egyptian of that day,
just like the Englishman of to-day, took pleasure in watching, and
controlling, the life and growth of plants; in tending them, because
they tasked, and were dependent on, his thought and care; in making
them minister to a refined and refining taste for the beautiful; and in
creating by their aid, within the limits in such matters assigned to man,
a kind of artificial nature.
Of course all sub-tropical, and many tropical, trees and plants do well
here, if only they be regularly supplied with water. I never saw more
interesting gardens, on a small scale, than those of S. Cecolani at
Alexandria, and of the American Consul at Port Saïd. The same may be
said of the garden of the Viceroy at his Gezeerah palace. In them you
will find the plants we keep in stove houses doing well in the open
air, and many of them in flower at Christmas, or soon after. In the
first-mentioned of these gardens I saw very beautiful specimens of the
Norfolk Island pine, about thirty feet high, growing luxuriantly. There
was also a species of solanum, which, if I knew its Christian name, I
would commend to the attention of those who are endeavouring to produce,
in their English gardens, something of a sub-tropical effect. It was
about ten feet high, and was so regularly filled up with branches, as to
have a completely symmetrical, a somewhat dome-like, form. Its leaves
were large, rough, and prickly. At the extremity of each twig, or lesser
branch, was a large branching spike of purple flowers. The individual
flowers in the spikes of bloom were about the size of the flower of
its relative, the common potato, and similar in shape. It was a most
effective shrub. I never saw one more so.
It is generally supposed amongst us that our English gardens are quite
unrivalled. They may be in the thought, care, and money bestowed upon
them; but in variety of interest they are very inferior to Egyptian
gardens. These may contain all the plants we consider most beautiful and
most worthy of artificial heat; which, too, may be grouped with bamboos,
palms, Indian figs, bananas, cactuses, daturas, poinsettias nine or ten
feet high, and many other plants and trees one would go some way to see
growing with the freedom and luxuriance they exhibit in this bright,
winterless climate, in which the transparent sunlight is never the mere
mocking garb of a withering Liebig-extract of East wind.