Category: History

Joan Alcock says that the Republic’s most popular garden was the Vegetable Garden, but the Empire’s favourite garden was the Flower Garden. ((Or have I got that backward?)) All, however, were very proud of their gardens. Pliny insisted that those who visited the flower gardens were to go through the vegetable garden, the better to appreciate it.

If you have a slave society, you have to keep the slaves occupied, to avoid a revolt. Many of the Roman manuals suggest that slaves pick off greenfly by hand; maybe this was just to keep them occupied. On the other hand, was there any evidence that a barefoot menstruating girl walking round the plants was any more effective at getting rid of pests?

Their tools were more or less the same as ours, and barely needed improvement. Roman spades were wooden, with a T handle and an iron sheath; the sheath and the nails that held it to the wood are generally all that is left.

The Romans were very interested in the medical properties of vegetables. Pliny the Elder spends Book 19 on the vegetables, and 20 and others on the medical properties. Joan spent some months in the hospital last year trying to get the back in order, during which she wondered whether she should turn to Pliny, who said that ashes of bean stalks are good for the back and sciatica. “But he doesn’t say whether the ashes should be eaten or rubbed on the back.”

Romans brought a lot of vegetables into the wild and cultivated them. Carrots and turnips were hard and wooden, but were pulverised in a dish with stones in the bottom. They brought weeds into the garden, and spread their vegetables around the empire, with samples found from forts in Britain and Germany.