• Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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• v.51 no.5
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• pp.57-69
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• 2023

This study investigates the garden vision of the Ancient Rome, focusing on garden literature in the Natural History by Pliny the Elder. Ancient Roman garden's types, character, and forms greatly influenced the development of later Western gardens, to which the practical and professional texts of Pliny the Elder and others contributed. This study explores the garden visions projected in these texts, with an introduction of Roman garden forms and stylistic features. The Natural History and other garden and agricultural texts written during the Ancient Roman period are characterized by their focus on practical production spaces rather than abstract nature or garden art. In the Natural History, Pliny described botanics in terms of usefulness rather than pleasure, and his discussion is premised on the practical hortus. In ancient Roman society, gardens were not only spaces for practical production and relaxation, and places to reproduce or realize the ideals of Roman rulers and intellectuals, including Pliny. They shared the episteme that sought to encompass knowledge of the entire world they ruled and, in doing so, realize their vision of the Roman Empire. Through the Natural History, Pliny sought to embrace useful knowledges of his time into the vast civilized world of the Roman Empire, and the garden was an important place to practice this ideal.