Front garden near the house: why was it done in the past? Isn't it for beauty?

Perhaps each of us at least once in our lives has seen a small garden near an old house, usually from the street side. Often beautiful flowers and ornamental shrubs were planted there, and in some cases they even laid out a small garden of fruit trees or planted them with currants, raspberries, and gooseberries. Sometimes a vineyard was also located here. This quaint and pretty area was called a front garden. However, the name has survived to this day.

But what was it really intended for and why was it always fenced off with a picket fence?

Cooling your home

When people began to build houses with large windows, they tried to fit even a few of them on the front facade of the building - it was both beautiful and practical (more light entered the house, and ventilation of the room was much easier). However, very soon everyone realized that, in addition to aesthetic pleasure, large windows have some disadvantages. Due to direct exposure to sunlight, the inside of the house became very hot, so much so that at times it was impossible to stay in it. It was necessary to somehow fight this and escape from the heat.

Today, in unbearable heat, we can turn on a split system or, in extreme cases, a fan. But people in the past were deprived of such amenities, and therefore the only way out of the situation was trees in front of the house, which created shade and did not allow the building to heat up so much.

In fact, this is how the tradition of planting plants in the front garden arose, which created dense shading and saved people from the heat.

The first impression of the site, and therefore of its owner, depends on the front garden, so the arrangement of this site has always been given special importance.

Livestock fence

The trees planted in the front garden played the role of a kind of air conditioner, although not as effective. But at that time, people not only had little choice, but none at all.

True, the tree still needed to be grown and the crown formed correctly. In the past, in villages and hamlets, livestock was kept in almost every yard: cows, goats, horses, rams, sheep. The animals were sent out for walking every day. So all these animals in a huge herd walked through the streets twice a day - in the morning and in the evening. It is clear that on its way it was capable of trampling all living things that people had planted, and also eating extra leaves. In order not to lose their plantings, people began to fence their front gardens, which served as protection from voracious livestock.

Why is the fence low?

The size and design of the fence were also important and it was not built haphazardly. To prevent living creatures from destroying the seedlings, a fence 1.2 m high was sufficient - that’s why it is so low. It was built from small pegs or picket fences, but a small gap was always left to ventilate the area.

The width and pitch between the stakes were also carefully thought out, but they didn’t think much about beauty. It was important that small animals (such as a goat or ram) could not stick their heads through and eat the plants.

These are the simple features of an ordinary front garden.As it turned out, it was not intended for beauty at all, but had a practical and important meaning in the past.