This chapter focuses on the appropriation and transplantation of new plants encountered during military campaigns abroad. This phenomenon, which was not exclusive to Roman generals but had various antecedents in earlier civilizations, forcefully entered Roman discourse on imperialism when even trees were displayed as spoils of war during triumphal celebrations. In elite versions of agricultural history such as Pliny’s, both the horticultural products of Roman Italy and of its new ‘imperial’ imports were considered as somehow instances of Roman civilizing processes of so-called barbarian landscapes. The chapter also discusses the possible modes of diffusion of new plants and cultivars around the empire: wealthy landowners who had properties in Italy and in various provinces, the military, who had notable geographic mobility, and traders.

Chapter 1 investigates how in the late Republic private gardens came to symbolize the qualities and cultural aspirations of their owners, essentially becoming a means for self-representation. This ideological development was the outcome of the blurring of boundaries between private and public architecture in terms of social and political significance. The chpater then focuses on two grand examples of garden planning that brought the symbolic use of green spaces into the political discourse and political competition: Lucullus’ Horti and Pompey’s Porticus. Plants displayed in a garden could convey specific meanings; when such plants were exotica imported from newly conquered lands, they spoke also of territorial conquests. The multi-layered cultural complexity of late Republican garden spaces was the basis on which horticulture and plant transplanting grew as an elite, ideologically charged activity.