400
    The Palace Garden at Sigiriya in Sri Lanka

460
    Sidonius writes about his Roman villa in Lac d'Aydat in Auvergne, France.
    Flora of Southeast Asia (Nan-fang ts'ao-mu chuang) by Hui-lin Li.
    Chinese "scholar gardens."

550
    Domestication of coffee takes place in Arabia until 800.  [Baker 1978]  Coffee drinking popular in Arabia.
    In the year 2000, coffee imports and exports are second only to oil on the world trade market.

560
    Ono No Imoko, Japanese Buddhist priest and scholar, living by a lake "ikebono", developed an elemental Ikebana flower arrangement style.
    Mayan agriculture research

618
    The Chinese emperor Yang-ti constructs the vast imperial garden called The Western Garden.
    Suzho, China - "City of Gardens";  Pi Jiang Garden.

670
    St. Fiacre - Patron Saint of Gardeners ( 620-670)
    Sacred Trees of the Celts

735
     Venerable Bede, Saint Bede (673-735)  English historian, scholar, and theologian.
    De Natura Rerum - Medieval science.   Many notes on monastic kitchen gardens.

750
    Use of the Green Man in art and lore becomes widespread in Christian Europe.  Internet resources include:  The Search for the Green Man  and   Who is the Green Man.  Books on the subject include:  Green Man: The Archetype of Our Oneness with the Earth by William Anderson, 1990. The Green Man by Kathleen Basford, 1978.  The Jack in The Green by Roy Judge, 1979.
    Arabs capture Chinese papermakers at Samarkand and adopt the process for papermaking.

800
    The city of Baghdad is a center of Arab Islamic culture.   Extensive scientific work on agriculture and botany for many centuries before and after.

812
    Charlemagne (742-812)  King of Franks, Emperor of Western Europe, patron of arts, sciences, and literature.  Experimented with plants in a private garden and coordinated planting efforts on estates.

850
    Hortulus- Liber de Cultura Hortorum (Book Concerning the Cultivation of Gardens).    Walafridus Strabo (809-849).
    Viking Age Foodstuffs

900
    Cordova, Moorish Spain, center for botanical studies and libraries and learning.  Information.
    Byzantine and Medieval Studies Links
    Tofu commonly eaten in China.

1044
    The Great Hunger of 1044:  The Progress of a Medieval Famine
    Sacred Trees in Celtic Traditions

1050
    Tale of Genji.   Japanese court novel describes aristocratic gardens.
    A Chinese scholar's garden.

1080
    The Book of Agriculture.    Ibn Bassal, Arab botanist, plant collector, and horticulturist.

1085
    The great Arab libraries in Toledo, Spain, provide Europeans access to sophisticated Islamic and Greek writings in science and agriculture.  The success of Arab agriculture in Andalusia, Spain, is renowned.

1094
    Sakuteiki.   Tachibana no Toshitsuna.   Japan treatise on garden design.

1122
    The Chinese emperor Hui-tsung has the famous Ken Yeh Garden "The Impregnable Peak" constructed.
    Manor system in Europe.  A manor was roughly 900 to 2,000 acres of arable land.

1180
    Al-Awwam writing on Andalusian agriculture and garden design.    Moorish Spain.
    Ibn Baitar writing on medicinal plants: Collection of Simple Drugs and Food.

1191
    Tea from China becomes popular in Japan.

1227
    Vatican botanical garden founded.  A medicinal or physic garden which still exists today, although in a different location.
    St. Frances of Assisi (1182-1126).  A holy man now known for his love of animals and nature, and his kindness.

1250
    The Japanese Buddhist priest Eisai (1141-1215) utilized a tea ritual as praticed in Chinese Buddhist temples.
    Medieval European views about the spontaneous generation of organisms.

1260
    De vegetabilibus.    Saint Albert the Great.  (1193-1280).

1280
    Marco Polo visits the palace garden of the Mogol ruler, Kubilai, in China.  Then he reports on visiting the famous Hsi Hu (West Lake) imperial gardens in the largest and probably most advanced city in the world at the time - (Kinsay) Hangchou, China.    He brought some new pasta making techniques back to Europe.

1305
    Opus Ruralium Commodorum, by Petrus de Crescentiis of Bologna.
    Medieval agriculture.

1339
    Koki-dera (Moss Garden) of Muso Soseki, Japan.
    Herding dogs used on European manors.

1350
    The great formal gardens of the Moorish Arabs (e.g., Generallife in the Alhambra, Granada, Spain) set standards.
    Decameron.   Giovanni Boccaccio.  County gardens provide a retreat for those fleeing the plague.

1357
    The Black Death in Europe.  A plague that reduced the population of Europe by 60%.

1400
    The Feate of Gardening.

1450
    Illustrations for Designing Mountain, Water, and Hillside Field Landscapes.  Zoen, Japanese landscape architect.
    Emperor Yoshimasa of Japan made flower arrangement part of universal education.
    Johann Gutenberg began printing with moveable type in Mainz, Germany.   By 1500, the world of ideas would never be the same in Western Europe because of this single invention.
 

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