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There is no single, securely identified “first garden” or first garden plant. The phrase can refer to crops people began cultivating, plants recorded in ancient or medieval gardens, the first botanic-garden institutions, or plant lineages with prehistoric histories. Those stories have different evidence: seeds and plant remains, written records and plans, institutional histories, or fossils.
The clearest starting point is early farming in Southwest Asia. There, people managed wild plants over time, and some eventually became domesticated crops. That history is not the same as a documented garden planting—and a plant lineage’s great age does not mean people grew it in the first gardens.
What were some of the first plants people cultivated?
A 2011 review by Daniel Zohary and Maria Hopf identifies eight Levantine founder crops associated with the beginning of agriculture in Southwest Asia during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic, roughly 11,000–10,000 years ago:
- Einkorn wheat (Triticum monococcum)
- Emmer wheat (Triticum turgidum subsp. dicoccum)
- Barley (Hordeum vulgare)
- Lentil (Lens culinaris)
- Pea (Pisum sativum)
- Chickpea (Cicer arietinum)
- Bitter vetch (Vicia ervilia)
- Flax (Linum usitatissimum)
These were not necessarily all domesticated at once, nor were they planted together in one known garden. “Cultivation” can mean people tended or encouraged useful wild plants; “domestication” means populations developed inherited traits associated with human selection. The two processes can be separated by generations, and the archaeological evidence differs by crop and site.
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How archaeologists distinguish wild and domesticated crops
In wild cereal grasses, ripe ears tend to break apart and scatter their seeds. Domesticated forms more often retain the seeds on the plant, making harvesting easier. Comparable seed-retention changes help identify domestication in pulses and flax. Seed size can also change, but the review cautions that it is less diagnostic and may develop later. Charred seeds and other plant remains must also be interpreted in context, and preservation and reliable identification affect what can be concluded.
Zohary and Hopf’s review describes early cultivation of wild barley and lentil separately from later evidence for clearly domesticated forms. In their synthesis, the earliest definite domesticated einkorn and emmer came from Early Pre-Pottery Neolithic B sites in Turkey; evidence for chickpea, pea, and bitter vetch was inconclusive. These are the authors’ assessments in a 2011 review, not a final chronology immune to revision.
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Where might the ancestors of these crops have grown wild?
A University of Copenhagen report dated 12 February 2026 describes a study that used climate modeling and machine learning to reconstruct likely ranges for 65 wild plant species associated with early farming in West Asia. The researchers’ models place many crop ancestors along the Mediterranean coast of the Levant, challenging older assumptions about their distributions.
The model offers a complementary view, not a replacement for archaeological finds. The report notes that the plant remains archaeologists recover can be shaped by preservation and discovery, while modeling estimates where species may have been able to grow. Archaeologist and lead author Joe Roe told the university that artifacts, seeds, and animal bones show early farming societies in the Middle East about 12,000 years ago, but that less is known about the natural vegetation from which early farmers selected useful plants.
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What counts as an ancient garden?
A crop’s domestication history does not by itself show that it was grown in a designed garden. Gardens may mean kitchen plots, medicinal beds, enclosed pleasure grounds, sacred groves, or institutions devoted to studying plants. Evidence for a planting in a specific place and period is a different claim from evidence that a plant was cultivated somewhere in a region.
The surviving record is uneven. The Metropolitan Museum of Art says no real medieval garden survives and that written records are rare and incomplete. The ninth-century plan for the monastery of St. Gall is an unusual example because it labels garden beds. Archaeology adds evidence, but historical documentation is stronger for medicinal infirmary gardens and aristocratic pleasure gardens than for ordinary kitchen plots.
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What medieval plant lists can—and cannot—show
A ninth-century edict of Charlemagne names 89 species for his estates. The Met draws on that list alongside herbals, monastic records, and archaeology in its modern Bonnefont Cloister Herb Garden. The list is valuable evidence of plants known or prescribed for estates; on its own, it does not prove that every named species grew in one particular garden. Nor is the museum’s present-day garden a preserved ninth-century planting. Its broader collection includes more than 400 plants known and used in the Middle Ages, some gathered wild or brought in as dried spices rather than garden-grown.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Which institution was the first botanical garden?
There is no uncontested answer because “botanical garden” can describe different institutions and precedents. Kew historian Sharon Willoughby notes that many accounts identify surviving sixteenth-century physic gardens—gardens used to teach medical students about plants—as the earliest botanic gardens. Other proposed predecessors include Leiden, a thirteenth-century papal garden, Aristotle’s Lyceum, and Moctezuma’s garden at Huaxtepec. They are not all the same kind of garden or supported by the same kind of evidence.
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The University of Pisa says its Garden of Simples was founded in 1543 at the request of Luca Ghini and calls it the world’s oldest university botanic garden. It moved in 1563 and again in 1591; the present site dates from the latter move. That is the university’s stated claim and founding history, rather than a universally settled ranking.
Botanic gardens today serve plant science, conservation, and public education. Kew, citing Botanic Gardens Conservation International, reported 1,775 botanic gardens in 148 countries in 2019; that is a dated count, not a current total.
Are ginkgo, horsetails, and monkey puzzle trees “ancient garden plants”?
They can be described as living representatives of ancient plant groups, but that is a deep-time evolutionary story—not proof of planting in early human gardens. The Natural History Museum’s account of plant evolution includes Carboniferous seed ferns and giant horsetails, Jurassic cycads, ferns, ginkgoes, and conifers, and living examples such as Ginkgo biloba and the monkey puzzle tree (Araucaria araucana). The museum describes monkey puzzle trees as having been on Earth for around 200 million years.
Fossils show that plant groups existed in remote geological periods. They do not establish that the same species were cultivated by Neolithic farmers or placed in ancient gardens. So a useful answer to “What are some of the oldest garden plants?” depends on whether “oldest” means early crops, plants documented in gardens, institutions, or evolutionary lineages.
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