The orchards and gardens of Pompeii, enclosed by high walls, or in a few rare cases hanging, ranged in size from 10 to 4000 square meters. Most of the gardens, some of them tiny, adorned houses located at the center of the ancient city. Some residences, the wealthiest, had more than one garden: the House of the Citarist, for example, had three.
In the suburban areas, especially in the vicinity of the Amphitheater, were public gardens such as those of the Great Palaestra, as well as numerous vegetable gardens, vineyards, orchards and plants grown for agricultural purposes and craftsmen’s activities, such as the production of flowers for perfume or the cultivation of nursery plants.
In many of the gardens were tricliniums built of masonry, larariums, and sometimes sundials, as well as small-scale domestic cultures of snails, dormice and doves, raised in special terracotta shelters.
