origin and history

Now, at Classic Garden Elements, we are of the opinion that the biblical paradise was a garden. And quite rightly so: what else could a paradise be?

It was called the Garden of Eden. We are equally certain that this garden had a certain sensuality. A sensuality of opposite attraction.

We are not quite so sure about the design of the Garden of Eden, especially whether trellises, arbors, arches and pergolas were already in use at that time. This question needs to be carefully researched, which has not yet been done.

What we do know is that the art of pergolas and espaliers dates back to the beginning of antiquity in ancient Greece, even to the time of the Assyrians. The Romans also kissed in fragrant Rose arbors and walked hand in hand under wine-laden Pergolas.

The English author and garden designer Katherine Swift brings us in an entertaining tour de force the origins and history of these trellises. Katherine Swift lives at Morville Hall, a stately home in Shropshire. She is known for her gardening columns, her best-selling book 'The Morville Hours' and the gardens she created at Morville Hall.

Origins and history of espaliers, arbors, arches and pergolas

A reflection by Katherine Swift

Playful pirouettes of light and shadow

Pergolas, arbors and arches provide some of the most intense of all garden pleasures

• the visible contrast between architecture and nature,

• the gardening joy of tied, trained and lushly growing plants,

• Fruits and flowers that dangle sensually in front of the mouth, nose and eyes,

• but more than anything else, the fine interweaving of inside and outside, the special feeling that only structures like these can convey, structures that are inside and outside at the same time.

The experience of walking or sitting under such an open, plant-covered structure is very different from sitting among or under trees, but also from the feeling of being inside a more solid structure or building.

In a pergola or an arbor, we are not removed from the sights, sounds and scents of the garden, from the playful pirouettes of light and shadow, the touch of a breeze, the passing of clouds overhead - in fact, we feel all these things with a kind of heightened awareness, as if the enclosing structure were drawing our attention to things that were previously just empty air.

Green invitations to linger

Arbors and pergolas give us the pleasure of a childlike feeling of security, the delicious feeling of being cared for. Such structures invite us to participate in the garden: they entice us to come in, to stroll, to sit, and above all to linger. In these airy, cared for structures, hours and minutes slow down to a pleasant feeling of complete timelessness.

There is something unsettling and unsatisfying about sitting in the garden without any security, like sitting in a room without an open fire: we never stay long, never sit down with a book or a blank sheet of paper staring at us white in the bright daylight.

Likewise, the Strolling à deux In the countryside, nothing creates a feeling of intimacy and security like the wide view of the outdoors, focused from an overgrown pergola.

And eating without the pleasant light shade of trellises or gazebos seems routine, even spartan, no matter how great the weather may be.

Assyrian King Ashurbanipal and Getrude Jeckyll

The attraction of such constructions is universal and timeless, spanning continents and millennia.

And since the beginning of antiquity, they have consciously and directly played with our sensual sensibilities. The earliest depictions of such open structures often used them as a setting for eating and drinking parties:

Greeks and Romans stretch lasciviously on their dining sofas, the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal feasts with his queen under a vine arbor, and night owls in the Alexandrian seaside resort of Canopus lounge among ripe grapes and fragrant roses.

In the 2nd century AD, the Greek writer Achilleus Tatios commented on the effects of light and partial shade, the delicious interplay of coolness and warmth on the skin - an effect carefully staged by Gertrude Jeckyll sixteen hundred years later in the English gardens she created. 

Since time immemorial, these wondrous structures have captivated artists and garden designers with the beauty of their architecture. Both have experimented with the playful, erotic contrast between architecture and gently winding plants: in gardens, in works of art and artefacts, from Greek vases to Pre-Raphaelite fabrics and wallpaper.

Madonna and Child

In medieval Christianity, arbors, especially rose arbors of all kinds, gained an additional spiritual significance – as a setting for depictions of the Madonna and Child.

On the one hand, they brought the holy figures into the real life of an everyday scene and, conversely, enriched everyday life with the awareness of the glory of God's creation.

The symbolism of paintings such as Cranach's Madonna in the Vine Arbor invites the viewer to internalize the partnership between God and man in the mirror of the partnerships between architecture and plants, gardener and nature.

Aesthetics and practical use

A recurring theme is the combination of aesthetics and practical, gardening benefits. The origins of pergolas, arbors and arches can be found in the climbing aids of ancient viticulture. Soon these originally simple supports were also used for a range of other climbing plants. Wine and roses have been a common combination since ancient times. Today, a range of modern trellises with successful designs present the beauty, sensuality and benefits of fruit, climbing plants, fragrance and flowers. But beyond their purely gardening function, pergola-shaped structures in particular have always been important links, mediators and separators between two spheres: in a monastery or a castle in medieval Europe, pergolas connected different buildings.

In Japanese gardens, the TORII Archway marks the transition between the secular and the sacred part. And in the English gardens of the twentieth century, which are divided into garden rooms, a pergola or a Rosenbogen the way from one garden room to the next.

Powerful parables for transience & change

Some of these structures resemble more solid, solid stone garden buildings, where we find an interior like that of a house built to last: protected from moisture, covered, sometimes walled.

But the pergolas, arbors and arches referred to here consistently convey an overwhelming feeling of transience and movement, a sense of all too fleeting moments.

Some cultures choose plants to enhance the sense of ephemerality, as in the traditional use of wisteria in Japan: wisteria whose delicate, paper-thin flowers are exposed to frost and rain, whipped by every gust of wind.

Elsewhere, however, the plants have been chosen to reverse this effect: as in the tunnels and arbors of seventeenth-century Europe, created from shaped hornbeams.

Here the plant takes over the function of architecture, while the architecture takes the form of increasingly fantastic espaliers, especially the French treillages acts as a completely independent ornament.

Even today, designers play with the instrument of 'time'. On the one hand, they design pergolas and arbors from dynamic, durable constructions such as living wood, for example willow. On the other hand, they use materials such as stainless steel, which remains unplanted.

Open, plant-covered arbors, arches, pergolas and Pavillions react to time and seasons, just like the garden itself.

The plants sprout, bloom, bear fruit. They wither or hibernate. Meanwhile, the structures they support weather gently over the years. Wonderful examples of the changeability of being.