1.
Lawn
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Lawns are used around houses, apartments, commercial buildings and offices. Many city parks also have large lawn areas, in recreational contexts, the specialised names turf, pitch, field or green may be used, depending on the sport and the continent. The term lawn, referring to a managed grass space, dates to no earlier than the 16th century, in many suburban areas, there are bylaws in place requiring houses to have lawns and requiring the proper maintenance of these lawns. In some jurisdictions there are water shortages, local government authorities are encouraging alternatives to lawns to reduce water use. Lawn is a cognate of llan which is derived from the Common Brittonic word landa that originally means heath, barren land, Lawns may have originated as grassed enclosures within early medieval settlements used for communal grazing of livestock, as distinct from fields reserved for agriculture. The word laune is first attested in 1540, and is related to the Celtic Brythonic word lan/llan/laun. Lawns became popular with the aristocracy in northern Europe from the Middle Ages onward, the early lawns were not always distinguishable from pasture fields. It is speculated that the association between the word pasture and biblical mentions made lawns a cultural affinity for some, the damp climate of maritime Western Europe in the north made lawns possible to grow and manage. They were not a part of gardens in other regions and cultures of the world until contemporary influence, before the invention of mowing machines in 1830, lawns were managed very differently. They were an element of wealthy estates and manor houses, in most situations, they were also pasture land maintained through grazing by sheep or other livestock. Areas of grass grazed regularly by rabbits, horses or sheep over a period often form a very low. This was the meaning of the word lawn, and the term can still be found in place names. Some forest areas where extensive grazing is practiced still have these seminatural lawns, for example, in the New Forest, England, such grazed areas are common, and are known as lawns, for example Balmer Lawn. It was not until the 17th and 18th century that the garden and they were made up of meadow plants, such as camomile, a particular favorite. In the early 17th century, the Jacobean epoch of gardening began, during this period, in the early 18th century, landscape gardening for the aristocracy entered a golden age, under the direction of William Kent and Lancelot Capability Brown. They refined the English landscape garden style with the design of natural, or romantic, Brown, remembered as Englands greatest gardener, designed over 170 parks, many of which still endure. His influence was so great that the contributions to the English garden made by his predecessors Charles Bridgeman and his work still endures at Croome Court, Blenheim Palace, Warwick Castle, Harewood House, Bowood House, Milton Abbey, in traces at Kew Gardens and many other locations. His landscapes were fundamentally different from what they replaced, the formal gardens of England which were criticised by Alexander Pope
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History of gardening
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Forest gardening, a plant-based food pro-system, is the worlds oldest form of gardening. Forest gardens originated in prehistoric times along jungle-clad river banks and in the wet foothills of monsoon regions, in the gradual process of families improving their immediate environment, useful tree and vine species were identified, protected, and improved while undesirable species were eliminated. Eventually alien species were selected and incorporated into the gardens. The enclosure of outdoor space began in 10,000 BC, though no one knows the specific details of the first garden, historians imagine the first enclosure was a type of barrier for excluding animals and marauders. Garden construction and design was a precursor to landscape architecture. The modern words of garden and yard are descendants of the Old English geard, vitruvius, a Roman author and engineer, wrote the oldest extant design manual in 27 BC. De architectura libri decem addressed design theory, landscape architecture, engineering, water supply, vitruvius asserted that firmitas, utilitas and venustas were the primary objectives of design. Some still consider these elements essential to quality design of landscape, after the emergence of the first civilizations, wealthy persons began to create gardens for purely aesthetic purposes. Another ancient tradition is of Persia, Darius the Great was said to have had a paradise garden, Persian gardens were designed along a central axis of symmetry. Persian influences extended to Helenic Greece after Alexander the Great, C.350 BC there were gardens at the Academy of Athens, and Theophrastus, who wrote on botany, supposedly inherited a garden from Aristotle. Epicurus had a garden where he walked and taught, and he bequeathed it to Hermarchus of Mytilene, alciphron also referenced private gardens in his writing. The most influential ancient gardens in the world were those of Ptolemy in Alexandria, Egypt. Wall paintings in Pompeii, Italy attest to later elaborate development, the wealthiest Romans built extensive villa gardens with water features, including fountains and rivulets, topiary, roses, and shaded arcades. Archeological evidence survives at sites such as Hadrians Villa, Byzantium and Moorish Spain continued horticultural traditions after the 4th century AD and the decline of Rome. In Europe, gardening revived in Languedoc and the Île-de-France in the 13th century, the rediscovery of descriptions of antique Roman villas and gardens led to the creation of a new form of garden, the Italian Renaissance garden in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. The Spanish Crown built the first public parks of this era in the 16th century, in the 19th century a welter of historical revivals and Romantic cottage-inspired gardening emerged. In England, William Robinson and Gertrude Jekyll were influential proponents of the wild garden, andrew Jackson Downing and Frederick Law Olmsted adapted European forms for North America, especially influencing the design of public parks, campuses and suburban landscapes. Olmsteds influence extended well into the 20th century, the 20th century saw the influence of modernism in the garden, from the articulate clarity of Thomas Church to the bold colors and forms of the Brazilian Roberto Burle Marx
3.
Garden design
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Garden design is the art and process of designing and creating plans for layout and planting of gardens and landscapes. Garden design may be done by the owner themselves, or by professionals of varying levels of experience. All of these considerations are subject to the limitations of the prescribed budget, a gardens location can have a substantial influence on its design. The soils of the site will affect what types of plant may be grown, as will the gardens climate zone, the locational context of the garden can also influence its design, for example an urban setting may require a different design style to a rural one. Similarly, a coastal location may necessitate a different treatment compared to a sheltered inland site. The quality of a soil can have a significant influence on a gardens design. However soils may be replaced or improved in order to them more suitable. Traditionally, garden soil is improved by amendment, the process of adding beneficial materials to the native subsoil and particularly the topsoil. The added materials, which may consist of compost, peat, sand, mineral dust, or manure, among others, are mixed with the soil to the preferred depth. The amount and type of amendment may depend on many factors, including the amount of existing soil humus, the structure, the soil acidity/alkalinity. One source states that, conditioning the soil thoroughly before planting enables the plants to establish themselves quickly, however, not all gardens are, or should be, amended in this manner, since many plants prefer an impoverished soil. In this case, poor soil is better than a soil that has been artificially enriched. The design of a garden can be affected by the nature of its boundaries, planting can be used to modify an existing boundary line by softening or widening it. Introducing internal boundaries can help divide or break up a garden into smaller areas, the main types of boundary within a garden are hedges, walls and fences. A hedge may be evergreen or deciduous, formal or informal, short or tall, depending on the style of the garden and purpose of the boundary. A wall has a strong foundation beneath it at all points, a fence differs from a wall in that it is anchored only at intervals, and is usually constructed using wood or metal. In temperate western gardens, an expanse of lawn is often considered essential to a garden. However garden designers may use other surfaces, for example those made up of gravel, small pebbles, or wood chips in order to create a different appearance
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Landscape
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A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms and how they integrate with natural or man-made features. The character of a landscape helps define the self-image of the people who inhabit it and it is the dynamic backdrop to people’s lives. Landscape can be as varied as farmland, a landscape park, the activity of modifying the visible features of an area of land is referred to as landscaping. There are several definitions of what constitutes a landscape, depending on context, the term landscape emerged around the turn of the sixteenth century to denote a painting whose primary subject matter was natural scenery. Land may be taken in its sense of something to people belong. The suffix ‑scape is equivalent to the more common English suffix ‑ship, the roots of ‑ship are etymologically akin to Old English sceppan or scyppan, meaning to shape. The suffix ‑schaft is related to the verb schaffen, so that ‑ship, the word landscape, first recorded in 1598, was borrowed from a Dutch painters term. An example of this usage can be found as early as 1662 in the Book of Common Prayer, Could we but climb where Moses stood. Setting, In works of narrative, it includes the moment in time and geographic location in which a story takes place. Picturesque, The word literally means in the manner of a picture, fit to be made into a picture, and used as early as 1703, gilpin’s Essay on Prints defined picturesque as a term expressive of that peculiar kind of beauty, which is agreeable in a picture. A view, A sight or prospect of some landscape or extended scene, wilderness, An uncultivated, uninhabited, and inhospitable region. Cityscape, The urban equivalent of a landscape, in the visual arts a cityscape is an artistic representation, such as a painting, drawing, print or photograph, of the physical aspects of a city or urban area. Seascape, A photograph, painting, or other work of art depicts the sea. Geomorphology is the study of the origin and evolution of topographic and bathymetric features created by physical or chemical processes operating at or near Earths surface. Geomorphology is practiced within physical geography, geology, geodesy, engineering geology, archaeology and this broad base of interests contributes to many research styles and interests within the field. The surface of Earth is modified by a combination of processes that sculpt landscapes, and geologic processes that cause tectonic uplift and subsidence. Many of these factors are strongly mediated by climate, the Earth surface and its topography therefore are an intersection of climatic, hydrologic, and biologic action with geologic processes. Desert, Plain, Taiga, Tundra, Wetland, Mountain, Mountain range, Cliff, Coast, Littoral zone, Glacier, Polar regions of Earth, Shrubland, Forest, Rainforest, Woodland, Jungle, Moors
5.
Vegetable
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In everyday usage, a vegetable is any part of a plant that is consumed by humans as food as part of a meal. The term vegetable is somewhat arbitrary, and largely defined through culinary and it normally excludes other food derived from plants such as fruits, nuts, and cereal grains, but includes seeds such as pulses. The original meaning of the vegetable, still used in biology, was to describe all types of plant, as in the terms vegetable kingdom. At first, plants which grew locally would have been cultivated, nowadays, most vegetables are grown all over the world as climate permits, and crops may be cultivated in protected environments in less suitable locations. China is the largest producer of vegetables and global trade in agricultural products allows consumers to purchase vegetables grown in faraway countries, the scale of production varies from subsistence farmers supplying the needs of their family for food, to agribusinesses with vast acreages of single-product crops. Depending on the type of vegetable concerned, harvesting the crop is followed by grading, storing, processing, and marketing. Vegetables can be either raw or cooked and play an important role in human nutrition, being mostly low in fat and carbohydrates. Many nutritionists encourage people to consume plenty of fruit and vegetables, the word vegetable was first recorded in English in the early 15th century. It comes from Old French, and was applied to all plants. It derives from Medieval Latin vegetabilis growing, flourishing, a change from a Late Latin meaning to be enlivening, quickening. The meaning of vegetable as a plant grown for food was not established until the 18th century, in 1767, the word was specifically used to mean a plant cultivated for food, an edible herb or root. The year 1955 saw the first use of the shortened, slang term veggie, the broadest definition is the words use adjectivally to mean matter of plant origin to distinguish it from animal, meaning matter of animal origin. More specifically, a vegetable may be defined as any plant, part of which is used for food, a secondary meaning then being the edible part of such a plant. A more precise definition is any plant part consumed for food that is not a fruit or seed, falling outside these definitions are edible fungi and edible seaweed which, although not parts of plants, are often treated as vegetables. In everyday language, the fruit and vegetable are mutually exclusive. Fruit has a precise meaning, being a part that developed from the ovary of a flowering plant. This is considerably different from the words culinary meaning, while peaches, plums, and oranges are fruit in both senses, many items commonly called vegetables, such as eggplants, bell peppers, and tomatoes, are botanically fruits. The question of whether the tomato is a fruit or a vegetable found its way into the United States Supreme Court in 1893
6.
Fruit
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In botany, a fruit is the seed-bearing structure in flowering plants formed from the ovary after flowering. Fruits are the means by which angiosperms disseminate seeds, accordingly, fruits account for a substantial fraction of the worlds agricultural output, and some have acquired extensive cultural and symbolic meanings. On the other hand, in usage, fruit includes many structures that are not commonly called fruits, such as bean pods, corn kernels, tomatoes. The section of a fungus that produces spores is called a fruiting body. Many common terms for seeds and fruit do not correspond to the botanical classifications, however, in botany, a fruit is the ripened ovary or carpel that contains seeds, a nut is a type of fruit and not a seed, and a seed is a ripened ovule. Examples of culinary vegetables and nuts that are botanically fruit include corn, cucurbits, eggplant, legumes, sweet pepper, in addition, some spices, such as allspice and chili pepper, are fruits, botanically speaking. g. Botanically, a grain, such as corn, rice, or wheat, is also a kind of fruit. However, the wall is very thin and is fused to the seed coat. The outer, often edible layer, is the pericarp, formed from the ovary and surrounding the seeds, the pericarp may be described in three layers from outer to inner, the epicarp, mesocarp and endocarp. Fruit that bears a prominent pointed terminal projection is said to be beaked, a fruit results from maturation of one or more flowers, and the gynoecium of the flower forms all or part of the fruit. Inside the ovary/ovaries are one or more ovules where the megagametophyte contains the egg cell, after double fertilization, these ovules will become seeds. The ovules are fertilized in a process starts with pollination. After pollination, a tube grows from the pollen through the stigma into the ovary to the ovule, later the zygote will give rise to the embryo of the seed, and the endosperm mother cell will give rise to endosperm, a nutritive tissue used by the embryo. As the ovules develop into seeds, the ovary begins to ripen and the ovary wall, in some multiseeded fruits, the extent to which the flesh develops is proportional to the number of fertilized ovules. The pericarp is often differentiated into two or three distinct layers called the exocarp, mesocarp, and endocarp, in some fruits, especially simple fruits derived from an inferior ovary, other parts of the flower, fuse with the ovary and ripen with it. In other cases, the sepals, petals and/or stamens and style of the fall off. When such other floral parts are a significant part of the fruit, it is called an accessory fruit, since other parts of the flower may contribute to the structure of the fruit, it is important to study flower structure to understand how a particular fruit forms. There are three modes of fruit development, Apocarpous fruits develop from a single flower having one or more separate carpels
7.
Perennial plant
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A perennial plant or simply perennial is a plant that lives for more than two years. The term is used to differentiate a plant from shorter-lived annuals and biennials. The term is widely used to distinguish plants with little or no woody growth from trees and shrubs. Tomato vines, for example, live several years in their natural habitat but are grown as annuals in temperate regions because they dont survive the winter. There is also a class of evergreen, or non-herbaceous, perennials, an intermediate class of plants is known as subshrubs, which retain a vestigial woody structure in winter, e. g. Penstemon. The local climate may dictate whether plants are treated as shrubs or perennials, for instance, many varieties of Fuchsia are shrubs in warm regions, but in colder temperate climates may be cut to the ground every year as a result of winter frosts. The symbol for a plant, based on Species Plantarum by Linnaeus, is. Perennial plants can be short-lived or they can be long-lived, as are some plants like trees. They include an assortment of plant groups from ferns and liverworts to the highly diverse flowering plants like orchids. Plants that flower and fruit only once and then die are termed monocarpic or semelparous, however, most perennials are polycarpic, flowering over many seasons in their lifetime. Perennials typically grow structures that allow them to adapt to living one year to the next through a form of vegetative reproduction rather than seeding. These structures include bulbs, tubers, woody crowns, rhizomes plus others and they might have specialized stems or crowns that allow them to survive periods of dormancy over cold or dry seasons during the year. Many perennials have developed specialized features that allow them to extreme climatic. Some have adapted to hot and dry conditions or cold temperatures. Those plants tend to invest a lot of resource into their adaptations and often do not flower, Many perennials produce relatively large seeds, which can have an advantage, with larger seedlings produced after germination that can better compete with other plants. Some annuals produce many seeds per plant in one season, while some perennials are not under the same pressure to produce large numbers of seeds. In warmer and more favorable climates, perennials grow continuously, in seasonal climates, their growth is limited to the growing season. In some species, perennials retain their foliage all year round, other plants are deciduous perennials, for example, in temperate regions a perennial plant may grow and bloom during the warm part of the year, with the foliage dying back in the winter
8.
Gardens of the French Renaissance
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In 1495, King Charles VIII and his nobles brought the Renaissance style back to France after their war campaign in Italy. They reached their peak in the gardens of the royal Château de Fontainebleau, the Château de Blois, the Château dAmboise, and the Château de Chenonceau. They became an extension of the châteaux that they surrounded, and were designed to illustrate the Renaissance ideals of measure and proportion, King Charles V of France ordered a French translation in 1373, and the new Italian style began to appear in France. This became a feature of Renaissance gardens. All these elements were to appear in French Renaissance gardens, in 1495, Charles VIII invaded the kingdom of Naples, and he and his court saw the luxury of the palaces and gardens in Italy. When he returned to France, he back with him a number of Italian artists, including priest. Charles ordered the addition of Renaissance features to his residence of the Château dAmboise on the banks of the Loire. Mercogliano extended the terrace of the château, surrounded it by galleries, besides the parterres of flowers, the gardens produced a wide variety of vegetables and fruits, including orange and lemon trees in boxes, which were taken indoors in winter. The building that sheltered them, still standing, was the first orangerie in France, the gardens were on the site of the present-day Place Victor-Hugo and the site of the railways station. The last vestiges of the garden were destroyed in 1890 by the construction of the Avenue Victor-Hugo. At about the time, Mercogliano designed gardens for the Château de Gaillon, owned by Cardinal Georges dAmboise, a Minister of King Henry IV. The gardens, built on different levels below the old medieval château, were planted in parterres of flowers, the parterre at the entrance of the garden featured the coat of arms of France in flowers. Bushes were trimmed into the shapes of men on horseback, ships and it was also decorated with imposing fountains of marble. The gardens of the Château de Bury were built between 1511 and 1524 by Florimont Robertet, a Secretary of State for both Louis XII and Francis I, Robertet had visited the villa Medici in at Fiesole, and wanted to reproduce the terraced gardens he saw there. The château, departing from the design of castles, was integrated closely with its gardens. Visitors passed through a garden inside the castle and out into two geometric gardens behind the château, decorated with fountains and surrounded by a wooden gallery. The axis went from the entrance to the chapel, at the far end of the garden, like Italian Renaissance gardens, the gardens of Bury were elocated on the edge of a hill, with a fine view of the forest of Blois. In the center of the court of the château, Robertet placed a copy of Michelangelos David
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French formal garden
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The French formal garden, also called the jardin à la française, is a style of garden based on symmetry and the principle of imposing order on nature. The Garden à la française evolved from the French Renaissance garden, the gardens were designed to represent harmony and order, the ideals of the Renaissance, and to recall the virtues of Ancient Rome. His successor Henry II, who had traveled to Italy and had met Leonardo da Vinci. The Château de Chenonceau had two gardens in the new style, one created for Diane de Poitiers in 1551, in 1536 the architect Philibert de lOrme, upon his return from Rome, created the gardens of the Château dAnet following the Italian rules of proportion. The different parts of the gardens were not harmoniously joined together, all this was to change in the middle of the 17th century with the development of the first real Garden à la française. The first important garden à la française was the Chateau of Vaux-le-Vicomte, created by Nicolas Fouquet, Fouquet commissioned Louis Le Vau to design the chateau, Charles Le Brun to design statues for the garden, and André Le Nôtre to create the gardens. For the first time, that garden and the chateau were perfectly integrated, the symmetry attained at Vaux achieved a degee of perfection and unity rarely equalled in the art of classic gardens. The chateau is at the center of this spatial organization which symbolizes power. The Gardens of Versailles, created by André Le Nôtre between 1662 and 1700, were the greatest achievement of the Garden à la francaise. The central symbol of the Garden was the sun, the emblem of Louis XIV, the views and perspectives, to and from the palace, continued to infinity. The king ruled over nature, recreating in the not only his domination of his territories. Andre Le Nôtre died in 1700, but his pupils and his ideas continued to dominate the design of gardens in France through the reign of Louis XV. The major inspiration for gardens continued to be architecture, rather than nature – the architect Ange-Jacques Gabriel designed elements of the gardens at Versailles, Choisy, nonetheless, a few variations in the strict geometry of the garden à la française began to appear. Elaborate parterres of broderies, with their curves and counter-curves, were replaced by parterres of grass bordered with flowerbeds, circles became ovals, called rotules, with alleys radiating outward in the shape of an x, and irregular octagon shapes appeared. Gardens began to follow the landscape, rather than moving earth to shape the ground into artificial terraces. Jacques Boyceau, sieur de la Barauderie the superintendent of royal gardens under Louis XIII and his book, Traité du jardinage selon les raisons de la nature et de lart. Ensemble divers desseins de parterres, pelouzes, bosquets et autres ornements was published after his death in 1638, claude Mollet, was the chief gardener of three French Kings, Henry IV, Louis XIII and the young Louis XIV. The gardens he created became the symbols of French grandeur and rationality, joseph-Antoine Dezallier dArgenville wrote Theorie et traite de jardinage, laid out the principles of the Garden à la francaise, and included drawings and designs of gardens and parterres
10.
Cottage garden
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The cottage garden is a distinct style that uses informal design, traditional materials, dense plantings, and a mixture of ornamental and edible plants. English in origin, it depends on grace and charm rather than grandeur, the earliest cottage gardens were more practical than todays, with emphasis on vegetables and herbs, fruit trees, perhaps a beehive, and even livestock. Flowers, used to fill spaces, gradually became more dominant, the traditional cottage garden was usually enclosed, perhaps with a rose-bowered gateway. Flowers common to early cottage gardens included traditional florists flowers such as primroses and violets, along with flowers with household use such as calendula, others were the richly scented old-fashioned roses that bloomed once a year, and simple flowers like daisies. In time, cottage-garden sections were added to large estate gardens as well. Modern cottage gardens include countless regional and personal variations and embrace plant materials, traditional roses, with their full fragrance and lush foliage, continue to be a cottage-garden mainstay — along with modern disease-resistant varieties that retain traditional attributes. Informal climbing plants, whether traditional or modern hybrids, are common, as are the self-sowing annuals. Cottage gardens, which emerged in Elizabethan times, appear to have originated as a source for herbs. One theory is that they out of the Black Death of the 1340s. Helen Leach analysed the historical origins of the cottage garden, subjecting the garden style to rigorous historical analysis, along with the ornamental potager. Authentic gardens of the yeoman cottager would have included a beehive and livestock, the peasant cottager of medieval times was more interested in meat than flowers, with herbs grown for medicinal use and cooking, rather than for their beauty. By Elizabethan times there was more prosperity, and thus more room to grow flowers, even the early cottage garden flowers typically had their practical use—violets were spread on the floor, calendulas and primroses were both attractive and used in cooking. Others, such as sweet william and hollyhocks were grown entirely for their beauty, the naturalness of informal design began to be noticed and developed by the British leisured class. Alexander Pope was a proponent of less formal gardens, calling in a 1713 article for gardens with the amiable simplicity of unadorned nature. Other writers in the 18th century who encouraged less formal, and more natural, gardens included Joseph Addison, william Robinson and Gertrude Jekyll helped to popularise less formal gardens in their many books and magazine articles. Robinsons The Wild Garden, published in 1870, contained in the first edition an essay on The Garden of British Wild Flowers, from the 1890s his lifelong friend Jekyll applied cottage garden principles to more structured designs in even quite large country houses. Her Colour in the Flower Garden is still in print today, the Arts and Crafts Exhibition of 1888 began a movement toward an idealised natural country garden style. The garden designs of Robinson and Jekyll were often associated with Arts and Crafts style houses, the cottage garden ideal was also spread by artists such as water-colourist Helen Allingham
11.
Austin, Texas
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Austin is the capital of the U. S. state of Texas and the seat of Travis County. It is the 11th-most populous city in the U. S. and it is the fastest growing large city in the United States and the second most populous capital city after Phoenix, Arizona. As of the U. S. Census Bureaus July 1,2015 estimate and it is the cultural and economic center of the Austin–Round Rock metropolitan area, which had an estimated population of 2,056,405 as of July 1,2016. In the 1830s, pioneers began to settle the area in central Austin along the Colorado River, in 1839, the site was officially chosen to replace Houston as the new capital of the Republic of Texas and was incorporated under the name Waterloo. Shortly thereafter, the name was changed to Austin in honor of Stephen F. Austin, the Father of Texas and the republics first secretary of state. The city subsequently grew throughout the 19th century and became a center for government and education with the construction of the Texas State Capitol and the University of Texas at Austin. After a lull in growth from the Great Depression, Austin resumed its development into a city and, by the 1980s, it emerged as a center for technology. A number of Fortune 500 companies have headquarters or regional offices in Austin, including Amazon. com, cisco, eBay, Google, IBM, Intel, Oracle Corporation, Texas Instruments, 3M, and Whole Foods Market. Dells worldwide headquarters is located in nearby Round Rock, a suburb of Austin, residents of Austin are known as Austinites. They include a mix of government employees, college students, musicians, high-tech workers, blue-collar workers. The city also adopted Silicon Hills as a nickname in the 1990s due to an influx of technology. In the late 1800s, Austin was known as the City of the Violet Crown because of the glow of light across the hills just after sunset. Even today, many Austin businesses use the term Violet Crown in their name, Austin is known as a clean-air city for its stringent no-smoking ordinances that apply to all public places and buildings, including restaurants and bars. The FBI ranked Austin as the second-safest major city in the U. S. for the year 2012, U. S. News & World Report named Austin the best place to live in the U. S. in 2017. Austin, Travis County and Williamson County have been the site of habitation since at least 9200 BC. When settlers arrived from Europe, the Tonkawa tribe inhabited the area, the Comanches and Lipan Apaches were also known to travel through the area. Spanish colonists, including the Espinosa-Olivares-Aguirre expedition, traveled through the area for centuries, in 1730, three missions from East Texas were combined and reestablished as one mission on the south side of the Colorado River, in what is now Zilker Park, in Austin. The mission was in area for only about seven months
12.
Belgium
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Belgium, officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a sovereign state in Western Europe bordered by France, the Netherlands, Germany, Luxembourg, and the North Sea. It is a small, densely populated country which covers an area of 30,528 square kilometres and has a population of about 11 million people. Additionally, there is a group of German-speakers who live in the East Cantons located around the High Fens area. Historically, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg were known as the Low Countries, the region was called Belgica in Latin, after the Roman province of Gallia Belgica. From the end of the Middle Ages until the 17th century, today, Belgium is a federal constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary system of governance. It is divided into three regions and three communities, that exist next to each other and its two largest regions are the Dutch-speaking region of Flanders in the north and the French-speaking southern region of Wallonia. The Brussels-Capital Region is a bilingual enclave within the Flemish Region. A German-speaking Community exists in eastern Wallonia, Belgiums linguistic diversity and related political conflicts are reflected in its political history and complex system of governance, made up of six different governments. Upon its independence, declared in 1830, Belgium participated in the Industrial Revolution and, during the course of the 20th century, possessed a number of colonies in Africa. This continuing antagonism has led to several far-reaching reforms, resulting in a transition from a unitary to a federal arrangement during the period from 1970 to 1993. Belgium is also a member of the Eurozone, NATO, OECD and WTO. Its capital, Brussels, hosts several of the EUs official seats as well as the headquarters of major international organizations such as NATO. Belgium is also a part of the Schengen Area, Belgium is a developed country, with an advanced high-income economy and is categorized as very high in the Human Development Index. A gradual immigration by Germanic Frankish tribes during the 5th century brought the area under the rule of the Merovingian kings, a gradual shift of power during the 8th century led the kingdom of the Franks to evolve into the Carolingian Empire. Many of these fiefdoms were united in the Burgundian Netherlands of the 14th and 15th centuries, the Eighty Years War divided the Low Countries into the northern United Provinces and the Southern Netherlands. The latter were ruled successively by the Spanish and the Austrian Habsburgs and this was the theatre of most Franco-Spanish and Franco-Austrian wars during the 17th and 18th centuries. The reunification of the Low Countries as the United Kingdom of the Netherlands occurred at the dissolution of the First French Empire in 1815, although the franchise was initially restricted, universal suffrage for men was introduced after the general strike of 1893 and for women in 1949. The main political parties of the 19th century were the Catholic Party, French was originally the single official language adopted by the nobility and the bourgeoisie
