Several men of the New Learning, who, like Shakespeare,
lived into the reign of James I, advanced many steps beyond the botanists of
the early days of Queen Elizabeth. The old Herbals--the "Great
Herbal," from the French (1516) and the "Herbals" published by
William Turner, Dean of Wells, who had a garden of his own at Kew, treat of
flowers chiefly with regard to their properties and medical uses.
The Renaissance did indeed "paint the lily" and
"throw a perfume on the violet";-for the New Age brought recognition
of their esthetic qualities and taught scholastic minds that flowers had beauty
and perfume and character as well as utilitarian qualities.
Let us look at some of them. First, that of
This seems to have been of the old type--the orchard-garden,
where a few old favorite flowers bloomed under the trees and in the central
"knot," or bed. In the Queen's locked garden at Havering- atte-Bower
trees, grass, and sweet herbs seem to have been more conspicuous than the
flowers. The Queen's gardens seem to have been overshadowed by those of her
subjects. One of the most celebrated belonged to Lord Burleigh, and was known
as Theobald's. Paul Hentzner, a German traveler who visited
He described it as follows:
"We left
Another and accurate picture of a stately Elizabethan garden
is by a most competent authority, Sir Philip Sidney (1554-86), who had a superb
garden of his own in
"Kalander one afternoon led him abroad to a well-arrayed ground he had behind his house which he thought to show him before his going, as the place himself more than in any other, delighted in. The backside of the house was neither field, garden, nor orchard; or, rather, it was both field, garden and orchard: for as soon as the descending of the stairs had delivered they came into a place curiously set with trees of the most taste-pleasing fruits; but scarcely had they taken that into their consideration but that they were suddenly stept into a delicate green; on each side of the green a thicket, and behind the thickets again new beds of flowers which being under the trees, the trees were to them a pavilion, and they to the trees a mosaical floor, so that it seemed that Art therein would needs be delightful by counterfeiting his enemy, Error, and making order in confusion. In the midst of all the place was a fair pond, whose shaking crystal was a perfect mirror to all the other beauties, so that it bare show of two gardens; one in deed and the other in shadows; and in one of the thickets was a fine fountain."