Indoor Floriculture - A Little History

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

Flowers in the house are useful and necessary (part 1)

Woman and flowers - how natural is this combination of natural beauty! Traditionally, the woman was considered the keeper of the family hearth, Bereginia. And to take care of her house, all its inhabitants, flowers helped her to a large extent, and in the most direct way. Research by domestic and foreign scientists in recent years has revealed amazing facts from the life of people and plants.

It is probably impossible to imagine a house without flowers today. We bring plants to the house at the behest of the soul, they delight the eye with their living nature, especially in the long winter months, when nature around them acquires a white-black, brown and gray palette of colors, with a rare blueness of the sky and even rarer golden sun rays. Perhaps, it is in the northern places that houseplants are especially valued with their endless variety of shades, even just green, and how many unexpectedly pink-variegated, crimson, anthocyanin, painted and velvety leaves from people from the tropics! Household flowers have endlessly varied leaf shapes, from tiny circles and ovals to intricate feathery, carved delights. Flowers can be of the brightest and most delicate colors, delicate aromas. Indoor flowers are lianas, braiding supports, trellises, trellises,and there are ampelous shapes, beautifully hanging their lush stems from hanging or bookshelves, whatnots, slides, graceful stands for them.

Miniature forms of flowers are grown even in large glasses, bottles, and there are also aquatic plants in aquariums and bowls … In a word, the variety of plant forms is truly endless, and everyone can choose what is closer to him. A piece of nature in a house in the form of an indoor garden is our salvation in the "stone jungle" of modern cities, and this must be taken literally.

A bit of history

Do you know how long ago people started growing indoor plants? Archaeologists believe that about 5 thousand years ago, and it began in China. Around the same time, potted flowers appeared in the Near and Middle East. The ancient Greeks and Romans also appreciated the beauty of houseplants and willingly decorated their homes with them. Excavations of ancient Pompeii, covered with the ashes of Vesuvius, showed that the villas of this city were decorated with flowers. With the fall of Rome (476 AD), the art of indoor floriculture, sadly, was lost for centuries.

In Western Europe, the revival of this art took place only in the XIII century. In 1240, in honor of the arrival of the King of Holland, Wilhelm, in Cologne, a magnificent reception was given. Despite the cold winter, the room where the celebration took place was decorated with pot flowers and tubular flowering trees. It is believed that this was the very first winter garden in Europe, created by the work and skill of the outstanding gardener Albert Magnus. The spectacle was so fantastic that Magnus was even accused of witchcraft: after all, in winter his flowers and trees bloomed like in summer - they say, it was not without the participation of evil spirits … Fear of the Inquisition did not prevent the love of flowers from forever flaring up in the hearts of the Dutch who helped make this small country the mistress of the thoughts and thoughts of all the flower growers in the world,a source of stunningly beautiful new varieties and species of floral plants. But that happened later. In the meantime, European monarchs began to build greenhouses in their kingdoms and grow rare plants in them. And the very name of the greenhouse was derived from the French word orange, which means orange. And they really grew orange, lemon, coffee trees and many other southern plants that could survive only in protected ground even in southern Europe.which could survive only in protected ground conditions even in southern Europe.which could survive only in protected ground conditions even in southern Europe.

Later, England, the mistress of the seas and overseas colonies, became the center of indoor floriculture, from where plants of the tropics and subtropics were regularly brought to the metropolis. In the Middle Ages, sea voyages lasted for months, even people did not have enough fresh water on ships, and there were still tender southern plants that needed a lot of moisture and special conditions to survive. Not all seeds could withstand long-term transportation, they often lost their germination when the ships returned to their home port. The observation of the Englishman N. Ward helped to adapt a glass chamber, and then, in 1834, a larger "suitcase" made of glass for transporting tropical sissies over long distances, where plants were reliably protected from temperature extremes, salt water splashes and stormy winds. Thanks to such a mini greenhouse,the number of rare plants brought from overseas has increased significantly. Tropical ferns, bromeliads, orchids appeared in Europe. Researchers estimate that the famous Captain Cook alone brought over five thousand new plants to the UK. Exotic types of flowers were fabulously expensive, so indoor floriculture developed mainly at the expense of the elite of English society. Useful plants have appeared on the windows of ordinary townspeople: lemon trees that give healing fruits; aloe, the leaves of which healed many diseases, wounds and abrasions; ficuses, cleansing the air from dust and soot, other unpretentious plants. But gradually more and more plants became just a decoration of the house, without bringing obvious, immediate benefits. The varied color and shape of leaves, bright and fragrant flowers, vines and ampelous plants were appreciated. New types of flowers were acquired in botanical gardens and private collections.

In Russia, the fashion for indoor flowers arose during the reign of Peter I, who passionately loved plants, knew well how to handle them, planted gardens and personally ordered seedlings and seeds from abroad. But in the first house of Peter I in St. Petersburg there were still no indoor flowers, but their images were on the platbands of doors and windows. There were no conditions for the existence of domestic plants in the northern regions yet. Indeed, due to the harsh climate, windows in houses and palaces were made low and small in order to better keep warm. Plants are known to require good lighting, warmth and humid air for a normal life. Such conditions could only exist in special buildings - greenhouses, which appeared in the northern capital in the 18th century. Interestingly, the city of Oranienbaum got its name because A. Menshikov built greenhouses for growing orange trees. Such tub plants, as well as flowers blooming in pots, were brought to palaces to decorate ceremonies, dinners, weddings of grand dukes and other important events.

By the decree of Peter I in 1714, the Pharmaceutical Garden was created, where they began to grow medicinal plants for the needs of the city under construction and the army. There are also greenhouses, in which more and more new plants, not seen in the north, appear. Among them are milkweed, prickly pears, cereus, aloe. The Apothecary Garden becomes the Medical Botanical Garden, and later, in 1823, the Imperial Botanical Garden. Collections of living plants and herbariums, a collection of botanical literature will become world famous and appreciated by specialists and plant lovers. Already in 1755, according to the decision of the medical office, they will sell to "gentlemen and particular people" extra specimens of plants, including cacti, which are completely exotic species in Russia.

The heyday of indoor floriculture can be considered the period of the middle - the end of the 19th century, when a lot of special literature on the cultivation of domestic plants is published, “garden establishments” are successfully operating, where you can buy flowers and trees in tubs for every taste. The director of the Botanical Garden, E. Regel, regularly informs about the novelties in the world of flowers in the special section of the journal of the Imperial Russian Society of Horticulture. The assortment of ornamental plants in those days was truly huge, perhaps even more extensive than we see now in numerous flower shops.

At the beginning of the 20th century, there were many changes in the life of society, which could not but affect the entire way of life. Much has been destroyed, including the world of domestic plants. In the 60s and 80s, botanical gardens and experimental stations collected, studied, and propagated ornamental plants to transfer them to production for mass reproduction. Scientific institutions have studied the biological characteristics of different types of flowering plants for their use in residential, public, children's institutions, hospitals, educational institutions. A new direction of botanical science has emerged - phytodesign (from the Greek phyton - "plant" and English design - to design, construct).

To be continued