Arab gardens and Arabian gardening

3. Of Gardening in Arabia 743. The gardening and agriculture of Arabia may properly be said to constitute but one art, and that art is at the lowest ebb. Although the Arabs cultivate the ground, they do not hold it in any fixed occupancy. The whole of Arabia, with some few exceptions on its boundaries, is one immense common, over which the different tribes are in continual motion. When they come, at the rainy season, to a favourable spot, they sow it, wait about three months for its growth, reap the harvest, and proceed onward. The Fellahs, or fixed cultivators, are the objects of their most profound contempt, and an alliance with them is considered as involving the deepest ignominy. (Ed. Rev., and Gard. Mag., vol. vii. p. 93.)

Editor's Note: Loudon wrote in the early nineteenth century
and probably knew little of Saudi Arabia. As the below
photograph shows, the country had traditional buildings
construction , and date palms, in  Saudi Arabia 
(photo courtesy  retlaw snellac)