Gardening - A History of Supplies Articles | Garden Information Center

It's easy to want to jump ahead and picture the lovely flowers, fruits, and vegetables you can have in your garden without thinking about the supplies you need. However, knowing about the available garden supplies and tools on the market is essential to having a successful garden. In addition, the history of garden tools and garden supplies is fascinating because it sheds light on how gardens have been interwoven into the fabric of Western history and society.

Garden tools that we still use today are some of the earliest agricultural tools ever used by man. The first tools were made of wood, bone, and flint. Anthropologists think that perhaps garden tools were developed so early because they were used for increasing food supply that was essential to survival.

Yet, Ancient Greece is the motherland for gardening in the West and while the Greeks used tools such as wooden hoes, knives, shovels, rakes, and perhaps even an adze, gardening did not play a tremendous role in daily survival.

The Odyssey by Homer, one of the oldest epic texts still widely read in the United States, describes the garden of one of the characters, Calypso, as lush and orderly and as a place for contemplation.

The Greeks' cities were very crowded and allowed for the cultivation of private gardens. The fact that the Greeks had gardening tools and that gardening was described with such regard in literature shows how early Western civilization had great jealousy for the accomplishments of Oriental and Egyptian gardens.

Eventually, metalwork allowed for stronger gardening supplies. In the high Renaissance, Italians reinvented the garden with renewed vigor and interest in garden supplies. They used such supplies to make works of art of not just private small gardens but large gardens for kings' estates.

During the industrial revolution in England, gardens were held in extremely high esteem. The famous poets William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge thought of gardens and nature in general as nurturing places for mankind. In these gardens nature provided an escape for the soul. For the artists this was essential as they began creating works that espoused revolutionary ideas for allowing women and children to leave the harsh conditions of factories.

Now, ironically, industrial metal working is a part of American gardening. It allows for the manufacturing of modern cutting tools including grass shears. For many the garden is still a place of quiet and solitude, but since power tools became affordable to middle income Americans with large lawns and gardens industrial tools have become mainstream.

In the 1950s and 60s the popularity of the lawnmower made it a staple for many Americans. Having a well cut lawn was just as important as having a beautiful flower bed and was part of the American dream. Now rider mowers have become commonplace and John Deere is a household name brand that sells rideable mowers that can cost well over $1000. Other popular power tools include hedge trimmers, leaf sweepers, leaf blowers, and sprinklers. They can all be found online, at hardware stores and at large garden supply stores.