As a gardener we’ll find you looking to buy some garden spade UK or maybe checking out those Bulldog garden forks - but bear in mind, it’s taken centuries to reach this level. Hoes and shears are comparatively late developments, but as you’re aware, the concept of gardens is as old as Man. The activity we look at as an old familiar leisure occupation first began prior to the dawn of history.

Primitive gardeners were guided by a blending of spirituality, practical reasons, and pleasure. The important flowers as well as other food-bearing vegetation would grow around pools of fish. Some of the land was set aside, holy plants grown and cultivated in honor of their deities. Temple caretakers, too, tended to other roots on the surrounding land. Other nations, too, became known for the design of ancient plantations. These include the Assyrians, the Babylonians, to say nothing of the Persians, and they often incorporated buildings of noteworthy size into places. The Romans were another tribe who went in for tranquil gardens, but the Greeks were another matter. Food alone flourished in their farmsteads. Although we concede they had no access to rakes or forks, these civilizations did use quite the range of simple accessories which were prototypical of modern spades and hoes. Spades were made of stone in the earlier years, but their replacements would cobble them in iron, copper, and bronze. The chaos of Europe’s Dark Ages led later peoples to cast aside the elementary garden fork and the rest of the garden tools - save for the churches, who cultivated certain herbs and flowers.

Bit by bit we went back to the hobby of engineering gardens to enjoy. Rules began to evolve, a formalized structure determining the way the garden would, in the end, turn out. You’ve only got to appreciate the work invested in a hedge maze or knot garden for that to be manifest.

So if you happen to be trying to find out how to mend some annoying garden forks deformity or reading some informative lawn rake review, don’t forget that in the 1700s great talents like Lancelot “Capability” Brown, William Kent, not to mention Humphry Repton picked up a spade and the rest of the garden utensils to make real mind blowing gardens. Where others abided by these rules which had been religiously observed for centuries, William Kent and those like him cunningly mixed formal strictures with informal instinct by combining modern garden accessories along the lines of statues with natural lines.

Yes, things have advanced as time moves on, but gardens are still cultivated for the same reasons as our forefathers’. You’d be hard pushed to find a more picturesque setting than a garden paradise.