Hesperides with nuptial presents for the latter, and among them the goddess of Gaia, with branches having golden apples growing on them as a wedding gift. Hera, greatly admiring these, begged of Gaea to plant them in her gardens, which extended as far as Mount Atlas. The Hesperides were given the task of tending to the grove, but occasionally picked apples from it themselves. Not trusting them, Hera also placed in the garden an immortal, never-sleeping, hundred-headed dragon named Ladon as an additional safeguard. In the myth of the Judgement of Paris, it was from the Garden that Eris, Goddess of
Greek gardens and apples glowing red,<br> succulent figs and olives swelling sleek and dark.<br> And the yield of all these trees will never flag or die,<br> neither in winter nor in summer, a harvest all year round." The description is beloved of writers on gardens, nevertheless. No such gardens were known to Homer's contemporaries, as far as archaeologists can discern, any more than palaces like Alcinous', whose very doors were of bronze. The gardens of Greek myth were "untended" gardens, maintained in orderly fashion simply because order, "themis", was in the nature of things, as in the garden of the Hesperides, which