Brief History of Landscape and Landscaping

Shaping the landscape or landscaping if you prefer signify any activity or process that changes the features of a portion of land in a observable way, such as living elements of flora and fauna, landforms, such as terrain shape and elevation or bodies of water, human elements, such as structures and fences, and abstract factors such as elements to somewhat control the lighting and /or weather conditions.

Landscaping is a highly aesthetic landscape art form that needs a quantity of useful knowledge having to do with plant knowledge, practical applications and operating with various equipments. It could be stated that the earliest landscaper was the Greek philosopher Thales of Miletus, who spent a lot of time pondering the nature and various scopes of landscaping.

Where a lot of early landscapers said that true landscaping alters plants or fields directly, such as in the activities of farming of food crops, Thales rejected this definition of landscaping or shaping the landscape, arguing that any aspect of the physical world affecting someone's visual perception of an area of land was a correct application of landscaping. Landscape and landscaping are all around us each and everyone of us.

Both Aristotle and Plato had nothing but praise for Thales philosophical modeling related to landscape and landscaping, as well as how his theories can be applied somewhere else in philosophical exploration. G.E. Moore also mentioned Thales in several of his own philosophical works explaining how philosophical inquiry and discourse has led to the truest forms of human progress and understanding.

Then in the 1800s many philosophers debated if visual beauty should even be accepted as a required goal of landscaping or controlling landscape, though by the years 2000 a lot of western philosophical thinkers had grown to reject the idea of an objective aesthetic standard for any type of art, whether architecture or landscaping

Since the later half of the 20th century, landscaping professionals and practitioners have experimented with stunning visual landscape panoramas that since became widely accepted as being a category of landscaping, at least in the occident.

More often than not we do not appreciate the quiet beauty of great landscaping plans. In our busy life the time to look around and enjoy the beauty around us has become a luxury. Next time you go out of your work place on a nice sunny day, why don't you sit silently on a park bench and enjoy the landscape around you.