If you were to describe the perfect garden then you'd probably include a birdbath. They're part of our horticultural landscape and yet the birdbath has an indistinct history. Any investigation into where they came from will immediately take us to the ancient gardened spaces of Persia where the introduction of water in rills and splashing fountains would surely have drawn the attention of any birds. There are also the courtyard pools that captured and stored rainwater in the venerable buildings of Asia and the Roman Empire. But in these cases, any bird daring to take a bath would probably have been kept as a pet or captured to be eaten.