Garden of the Hesperides
The Garden of the Hesperides was a paradise at the far western edge of the world where golden apples grew on trees tended by nymphs and guarded by a dragon.
The Story of Garden of the Hesperides
The garden was Hera's private paradise, a wedding gift from Gaia. Golden apple trees grew there, tended by the Hesperides nymphs and guarded by the hundred-headed dragon Ladon. The garden lay near where Atlas held up the sky. Heracles stole the apples for his eleventh labour. The golden apples were also the catalyst for the Trojan War when Eris threw one inscribed "for the fairest" among the goddesses. The garden became the prototype for all paradise gardens in Western imagination.
Symbols
Fun Fact
The Greek word for the Hesperides' apples — melon — also means "sheep," leading some scholars to suggest the Golden Fleece and Golden Apples were originally the same myth.
Words We Inherited
English words and phrases that trace back to this myth. See our full guide to English words from Greek mythology.
Explore Further
Hesperides
🌿 nymphNymphs of the golden apples
The Hesperides tended golden apple trees at the western edge of the world.
Nymphs of the Hesperides
🐉 creaturenymphs,garden
The evening nymphs who tended the garden at the western edge of the world where the golden apple tree grew, daughters of Atlas or Hesperus and Hesperis.
Arcadia
🏛 placePastoral paradise of Pan
Arcadia was both a real mountainous region in the central Peloponnese and an idealised landscape of pastoral innocence, forever associated with Pan, nymphs, and rustic simplicity.
Ladon
🐉 creatureHundred-headed dragon of the Hesperides
Ladon was the serpent-dragon with a hundred heads who guarded the golden apples in the Garden of the Hesperides, never sleeping, each head speaking in a different voice.
Tempe
🏛 placeSacred geography
The Vale of Tempe, a gorge in Thessaly sacred to Apollo where laurel for the Pythian Games was gathered
Elysium
🏛 placeParadise for the blessed dead
The paradise at the edge of the world where heroes and the virtuous spent eternity in perfect happiness. Also called the Elysian Fields or the Isles of the Blessed.
Hyperborea
🏛 placeMythical paradise beyond the north wind
Hyperborea was a legendary land of perpetual sunshine and plenty beyond the north wind, where people lived in bliss for a thousand years.
Pieria
🏛 placeSacred geography
The region at the foot of Mount Olympus sacred to the Muses, who were sometimes called the Pierides
Ladon
🐉 creatureguardian, treasure
The hundred-headed serpent-dragon that guarded the golden apples in the Garden of the Hesperides, slain or tricked by Heracles during his eleventh labour.
Olympus
🏛 placeHome of the gods
The highest mountain in Greece and the mythological home of the twelve Olympian gods. Olympus was imagined as a paradise above the clouds.
Colchis
🏛 placeLand of the Golden Fleece
Colchis was a kingdom at the eastern edge of the Greek world, on the shore of the Black Sea in modern Georgia, famous as the destination of Jason and the Argonauts.
Mount Ida
🏛 placeMountain above Troy where gods watched the war
Mount Ida near Troy was the mountain from which the gods observed the Trojan War and where Paris judged the beauty contest between Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite.