A Little Something on Gardens in Ancient Egypt

Gardens at private houses and villas before the N.K. were mostly used for growing vegetables and located close to a canal or the river. However, in the N.K. they were often surrounded by walls and their purpose incorporated pleasure and beauty besides utility. Garden produce made out an important part of foodstuff but flowers were also cultivated for use in garlands to wear at festive occasions and for medicinal purposes. While the poor kept a patch for growing vegetables, the rich people could afford gardens lined with sheltering trees and decorative pools with fish and waterfowl. There could be wooden structrures forming pergolas to support vines of grapes from which raisins and wine were produced. There could even be elaborate stone kiosks for ornamental reasons, with decorative statues.

Temple gardens had plots for cultivating special vegetables, plants or herbs considered sacred to a certain deity and which were required in rituals and offerings like lettuce to Min. Sacred groves and ornamental trees were planted in front of or near both cult temples and mortuary temples. As temples were representations of heaven and built as the actual home of the god, gardens were laid out according to the same principle. Avenues leading up to the entrance could be lined with trees, courtyards could hold small gardens and between temple buildings gardens with trees, vineyards, flowers and ponds were maintained.

The ancient Egyptian garden would have looked different to a modern viewer than a garden in our days. It would have seemed more like a collection of herbs or a patch of wild flowers, lacking the specially bred flowers of today. Flowers like the iris, chrysantemum, lily and delphinium (blue), were certainly known to the ancients but do not feature much in garden scenes. Formal boquets seem to have been composed of mandrake, poppy, cornflower and or lotus and papyrus.

Due to the arid climate of Egypt, tending gardens meant constant attention and depended on irrigation. Skilled gardeners were employed by temples and households of the wealthy. Duties included planting, weeding, watering by means of a shaduf, pruning of fruit trees, digging the ground, harvesting the fruit etc.

Some Flowers and trees known to have grown in ancient Egypt:

Flowers:
The already mentioned iris, chrysantemum, lily and delphinium.
Blue lotus (the blue water lily Nymphaea caerula), white lotus
Safflor Cartamus Tinctorius, Calanchoe, Poppy Papaver Rhoeas
Hollyhock Alcea ficifolia, Mandrake Mandragora officinarum
Pomegranate
Wild flowers like Buttercup, Clover, Daisy, Cornflower.
The Water Lily and the Papyrus, sacred to Het-Hert and to Heru respectively, were considered life-giving and had further great symbolical value as the emblem of Upper and Lower Egypt.

Trees and shrubs:
Tamarisk sacred to Wesir, Olive, Acacia
Willow, Date palm sacred to Re and Min
Doum palm sacred to Djehuty
Sycamore sacred to Het-Hert
Persea, Christ thorn, Carob, Myrtle and other unidentified ones.
Different herbs grew in abundance.

Sources:
Vivi Täckholm; Faraos Blomster
Lise Manniche; An Ancient Egyptian Herbal
Alix Wilkinson; The Garden in Ancient Egypt
Dictionary of Ancient Egypt; Ian Shaw & Paul Nicholson
The Civilization of Ancient Egypt; Paul Johnson