Showcasing Roman gardens

The mural is about 2,000 years old but its flowers look as fresh as a daisy.

The fresco was excavated from a townhouse in Pompeii and depicts a typical garden in the Roman city in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius.

There are exotic palms and native viburnums, a bubbling birdbath, garden statuary and trees full of birds.

Aided by the Mediterranean climate, Pompeians built city houses that brought the outdoors in and the indoors out — and they cherished their little gardens.

The art of relaxing

But the form was more than just for function. For the residents, the seamless home and garden was essentially an elaborate stage where they practised the gracious art of otium or cultured relaxation.

“Well, maybe it's a forgotten art,'' said Carol Mattusch, guest curator of Pompeii and the Roman Villa, an exhibition at the National Gallery of Art, Washington.

The show offers more than a look at lifestyle before Vesuvius erupted in AD79. It provides clues to extracting more pleasure from our own gardens. (The exhibition is in the gallery's East Building until March 22.)

An area first settled by the Greeks, Pompeii, Herculaneum and the other seaside towns became fashionable when the Roman aristocracy built large villas overlooking the Bay of Naples.

The garden fresco comes from one of the more opulent, multistorey townhouses in Pompeii, known today as the House of the Golden Bracelet.

It was one of three similarly themed wall paintings in the living room, which faced a garden with a fountain, a pool and a pergola.

The adjoining room, the dining room, known as triclinium, has garden paintings and offers a view of the garden.

Although Pompeii existed before the globalisation of horticulture, the ancient Romans had plants from all corners of the Mediterranean and beyond.

The fresco reveals oleander, myrtle, rose, quince, pine and the strawberry tree. The image also brings alive the date palm, laurel, viburnum, bindweed and other plants.

The arrival of water, with the construction of a vast aqueduct from the north, transformed the gardens here in the decades before the eruption.

Watery decor

Through a network of lead pipes, Pompeians pressurised running water and went to town with fountains, waterfalls, canals, fishponds and garden statuary.

Herms were carved posts rising to waist height that were capped with heads of gods. The fresco shows two herms whose heads are topped with plaques.

The statuary of mythic heroes or Greek philosophers spurred intellectual discussions with guests and served as ways to show off art.

“And have a beautiful garden,'' Mattusch said, “listening to the birds and water. Imagine. This is a lifestyle to which we all secretly aspire but do we know how to get there?''