Although many people do not know it, the garden hose is a descendent of the fire hose.  Around the mid-1600s in Amsterdam Holland a boy named Jan Vander Heiden observed his city’s town hall burn to the ground.  Roughly 20 years later he and some other men, while fighting a fire, filled the water sack and attached a linen hose to run from the sack to the fire engine tank below.

As time went on the linen hose was replaced by a handstitched leather hose.  It wasn’t long before gardeners started to see the benefits of the hose that was first used to battle a fire.  350 years later gardeners all of the world consider their garden hose to be an integral part and the ultimate success of their garden and flowers.