Elizabethan Gardening

Aspects of Elizabethan Gardening and Landscape Architecture The reign of Elizabeth I was a golden era in side history, a time which abounded in manpower of genius. Among the many branches of art, science, and economy, to which they turned their attention, none profited more(prenominal) from the power of their wits, than did the art of t resting. Not having sh atomic number 18d her fathers personality, nor his desire to not let the people live in more splendiferous sur moveings than his own, Elizabeth encouraged this art and persuaded her subjects to build delightfully-complex and extravagant gardens by proposing visits.The queen and her retinue would cash in ones chips across the country and award the proprietors of the gardens she speci all(prenominal)y liked. She as well encouraged noblemen to support rese loathsomeers, writers and opposite great minds who alikek on the task of contributing to the improvement of landscape computer architecture in one way or another. Lord Burghley was the patron of John Gerard, a remarkable side of meat herbalist who published a list of senior high-flown plants cultivated in his garden at Holborn, still extant in the British Museum, and the famous work Great Herball, or Generall Historie of Plantes.To Sir Walter Raleigh, a notable poet and blue blood of the time, we owe the introduction of tobacco and of our most useful vegetable, the potato. An age of navigation and exploring, the Elizabethan era prided itself with the culture of various new flowers and plants (many of which were medicinal herbs) brought from India, America, the Canary Islands and other newly-discovered parts of the world.While re-editing Raphael Holinsheds Chronicles, in 1587, William Harrison states that he has seen over four hundred new species of plants entrusted to British soil and that, day by day, the people begin to prize of them as be foresighteding to their country. Lord Salisbury, Lord Burleighs son, commissioned a family of highly-s killed and educated Dutch gardeners (the Tradescants) to travel and bring back for his garden foreign species that could pretend been acclimatized.Written in his lively conversational English style, full of his own personal ideas and fancies, Francis Bacons Essay on Gardens is familiar to everyone. Always practical and center on what it was possible to do, Bacon wanted to put forward a scheme in better taste for the gardens he saw or so him. During Elizabeth Is reign, the persecution of the Protestants on the Continent drove many of them to find a safe refuge in England. They brought with them rough of the foreign ideas about gardening, and thus helped to improve the peg down of Horticulture.The Elizabethan garden was the outcome of the older fashions in English gardens, combined with the new ideas imported from France, Italy, and Holland. The result was a purely national style, better suitable to this country than a slavish imitation of the terraced gardens of Italy, or of tho se of Holland, with their canals and fish-ponds. There was no breaking-away from old plants and customs, no sudden change. The primitive medieval garden grew into the pleasure garden of the early Tudors, which, by a process of slow and gradual development, eventually became the more elaborate garden of the Elizabethan era.What one currently understands by a formal or old-fashioned garden, is one of this type. However, as genuine and unaltered Elizabethan gardens are rare, it is generally the further development of the alike(p) style a hundred historic period later, which is known as a formal old English garden. The garden of this period was laid out strictly in connection with the house. The architect who designed the house, was also responsible with designing the garden.There are some drawings extant by John Thorpe, one of the most historied architects of the time, of both houses and the gardens attached to them. The garden was held to be no mere adjunct to a house, or a confusi on of green swards, paths, and flower-beds, but the designing of a garden was supposed to require even more skill than the planning of a house. Men come to build stately sooner than to garden very well as if gardening were the greater perfection, states Bacon in his essay, underlying the general idea of the period.Sir Hugh Platts opinion seems to have been the exception that proves the rule, as most other writers were particular in describing the correct form for a garden, but he writes I shall not trouble the reader with any curious rules for shaping and fashioning of a garden or orchard how long, broad or high, the Beds, Hedges, or Borders should be contrived Every Drawer or Embroiderer, almost each Dancing Master, whitethorn pretend to such niceties in regard they call for very small invention, and lesse learning. In front of the house there was typically a terrace, from which the plan of the garden could be studied. Flights of steps and broad straight walks, called forthrights connected the parts of the garden, as well as the garden with the house. Smaller walks ran parallel with the terrace, and the spaces between were filled with pasture plots, mazes, or knotted beds. The forthrights corresponded to the plan of the building, while the patterns in the beds and mazes harmonized with the details of the architecture.The peculiar geometric tracery which surmounted so many Elizabethan houses, found its tete-a-tete in the designs of the flower-beds. William Lawson, a north-countryman of the time, of whom particular is known except for his own experiences which he put down in his work, A New Orchard and Garden, mentioned that the form that men like in general is a square. This shape was chosen in preference to an orbicular, a triangle, or an oblong, because it doth best agree with a mans legal residence, as Shakespeare tells us in his play, Measure for Measure.This sort of house gardens we can get a fleeting glimpse every now and then in Shakespeares plays, literary works in which he mentions details such as the knotted patterns of the beds, the high brick or stone wall with which the square garden was usually enclosed, the arbour of box where eavesdroppers could find good cover etc. Another common custom regarded covering the walls with rosemary. According to John Parkinson, an important English botanist of the time, at Hampton Court rosemary was so planted and nailed to the walls as to cover them only when. Gerard and Parkinson both refer to the custom of planting against brick walls. In the North of England, Lawson tells us, the garden-walls were do of dry earth, and it was usual to plant thereon wallflowers and divers sweet-smelling plants. With the seventeenth century, the interest in gardens began to make an appearance in belles lettres, quite independently of literal practical work and theoretical professional advice. One of the most visionary spirits of the age, Francis Bacon, was the first to direct attention to the matter in this way, though he was neither architect, nor gardener.Bacon formulated several noteworthy plans for organizing gardens The garden is best to be square, encompassed on all four sides with a stately arched put off. The arches to be upon pillars of carpenters work, of some ten foot high, and six foot broad, and the spaces between of the same dimension with the breadth of the arch. This fair hedge of Bacons ideal garden was to be raised upon a bank, set with flowers, and little turrets above the arches, with a space to receive a cage of birds and over every space between the arches, some other little figure, with broad plates of round colored glass, gilt, for the sun to play upon.It is not likely that such fantastical ornaments to a hedge were usual, though it reminds one of the arched arcades and does not seem to be at all a new idea of Bacons. When discussing in Gardeners Labyrinth the various models of fencing a round garden, Thomas Hill, a well-known astrologer of the time, describes palings of drie thorne and willow, which he calls a dead or rough barrier.He refers to the Romans for examples of the alternative of digging a vomit to surround the garden, but the general way is a natural enclosure, a hedge of white thorne artely laid in a some years with diligence it waxed so thick and strong, that hardly any person can enter into the ground, sauing by the garden-door yet in sundry garden grounds, the hedges are framed with the privet tree, although far weaker in resistance, which at this day are made the stronger through yearly cutting, both above and by the sides.He gives a superannuated method for planting a hedge. The gardener is to collect the berries of briar, brambles, white-thorne, gooseberries and barberries, steep the seeds in a mixture of meal, and set them to keep until the spring, in an old rope, a long worn rope being in a manner starke rotten. Then, in the spring, to plant the rope in two furrows, a foot and a half deep, and terce fe et apart The seeds thus covered with diligence shall appear within a month, either more or less, which in a few years will grow to a most strong defense of the garden or field.These old gardeners had great confidence in all their operations, and but rarely in their works do we find any allusion to possible failure. Yews were greatly use for hedges, but more for walks and shelter within the gardens, than to form the outer enclosure. In the larger gardens there were two or three provide in the walls, well designed, with magnificent stone piers surmounted with balls or the owners crest, and wrought-iron gates of elaborate pattern or else there was one fine gate at the principal entrance, the rest being smaller and less pretentious, merely a planked gate or little door.The main principle of a garden was still that it should be a girth, a yard, or enclosure the idea of such a thing as a practically unenclosed garden had not, as yet, entered mens minds. But because the garden was surroun ded with a high wall, and those inside wished to flavour beyond, a terrace was contrived. As in the Middle Ages, we find an eminence within the walls, as a point from which to look over them so at the time, the restricted view from the mount did not satisfy, and to get a more extended range over the park beyond and the garden within, a terrace as raised along one side of the square of the wall. Some pieces of information regarding these aspects we can find in Sir hydrogen Wottons writings on architecture I have seen a garden into which the first access was a high walk like a terrace, from whence might be taken a general view of the whole plot below. De Caux, the designer of the Earl of Pembrokes garden at Wilton, made such a terrace there for the more advantage of beholding those plots.Another is described at Kenilworth, in 1575, by Robert Langham hard all along by the castling wall is reared a pleasant terrace, ten feet high and twelve feet broad, even under foot, and fresh of f ine grass. The terraces, as a rule, were wide and of bewitching proportions, with stone steps either at the ends or in the centre, and were raised above the garden either by a sloping grass bank, or brick or stone wall.At Kirby, in Northamptonshire, a magnificent Elizabethan house, nowadays rapidly falling into decay, all that remains of a once beautiful garden, enrichd with a great variety of plants (as John Morton portrays it in his Natural History of Northamptonshire), is a terrace running the whole length of the western wall of the garden. At Drayton, an Elizabethan house in the same county as Kirby, there is a wide terrace against the outer wall of the garden with a summer-house at each end, as well as a terrace in front of the house, and other examples exist.The forthrights, or walks which formed the main lines of the garden design, were blanket(a) and fair. Bacon describes the largeness of the path by which the mount is to be ascended as wide enough for four to walk abreast , and the main walks were wider still, broad and long, and covered with gravel, sand or turf. There were two kinds of walks, those in the open part of the garden, with beds geometrically arranged on either side, and sheltered walks laid out between high clipped hedges, or between the main enclosure wall and a hedge.There were also the covert walks, or shade alleys, in which the trees met in an arch over the path. Some of the walks were turfed, and some were planted with sweet-smelling herbs. Those which perfume the air most delightfully, not passed by as the rest, but being trodden upon and crushed, are three that is, burnet, wild thyme and water-mints therefore you are to set whole alleys of them to have the pleasure when you walk or tread. Thomas Hill, in one chapter of his book, mentions that the walks of the garden ground, the consort even trodden out, and leveled by a line, as either hree or four foot abroad, may cleanly be sifted over with river or sea sand, to the end that s howers of rain falling, may not offend the walkers (at that instant) in them, by the earth cleaving or clogging to their feet. Parkinson also has something to say about walks The fairer and larger your associate and walks be, the more grace your garden shall have, the less harm the herbs and flowers shall receive, by passing by them that grow next unto the allies sides, and the better shall your weeders cleanse both the bed and the allies.The hedges on either side the walks were made of various plants box, yew, cypress, privet, thorne, fruit trees, roses, briars, juniper, rosemary, hornbeam, cornel, misereon and pyracantha. Every man taketh what liketh him best, as either privet alone or sweet Bryar, and whitethorn twist together, and Roses of one, two, or more sorts placed here and there amongst them. Some plant cornel trees and plash them or keep them low to form them into a hedge and some again take a low prickly shrub that abided always green, called in Latin Pyracantha.Regard ing the cypress, Parkinson mentions that, for the goodly proportion it has, as also for his ever green head, it is and hath been of great account with all princes, both beyond and on this side of the sea, to plant them in rows on both sides of some spacious walke, which, by reason of their high growth, and little spreading, must be planted the thicker together, and so they give a pleasant and sweet shadow.Gerard, writing of the same plant, says It grows likewise in diverse places in England, where it hath been planted, as at Sion, a place near London, sometime a house of nuns it grows also at Greenwich and at other places and likewise at Hampstead in the garden of Master Waide, one of the Clarkes of his Majestys Privy Council. Another interesting aspect of the periods gardening literature was the fact that, in several writings, there began to appear ideas for protecting and sheltering delicate and exotic plants, which a little later developed into orangeries and greenhouses, and e ventually into the hothouse and stove.Sir Hugh Platt, particularly, in the second part of The Garden of Eden, not printed until 1660, recurrently mentions the possibility of growing plants in the house, and making use of the notifys in the rooms to host gillyflowers and carnations into early bloom. I have known Mr. Jacob of the Glassehouse, he writes, to have carnations all the winter by the benefit of a room that was near his glasshouse fire. Holinshed, while admiring the rchards of his day, states that he has seen capers, oranges and lemons, and heard of wild olives growing here, but he does not say how they were preserved from cold. Gerard also describes both oranges and lemons, while also being, too honest, however, to pretend that they grow in England. A few oranges, nonetheless, were successfully reared in this country. In his treatise on the Orchard, Parkinson focuses on describing the surprising looking after and tending of the orangeness tree, as opposed to the Citron an d the Lemmon trees.The former used to be kept in great square boxes and lift there to and fro by iron hooks attached to the sides in order to move them into a house or close gallery in the winter time. Other writers suggest that, if planted against a concave-shaped wall, lined with lead or tin to cause reflection, they might happily bear their fruit in the cold climate if these walls did stand so conveniently, as they might also be continually warmed with kitchen fires.The experiment of growing lemons was tried by Lord Burghley. There are some interesting earn extant in which the history of the way in which the tree was procured is preserved. Sir William Cecil wrote to Sir Thomas Windebank nigh 1561, requesting to have a lemon, a pomegranate and a myrt tree procured for him, along with the instructions on how they should be kept, because he desired to enrich his collection of exotic vegetation (collection which the orange tree was already part of).Although these foreign species o f trees became widespread many years later, having been regarded as rarities for half a century, these fist instances of their importation are useful for us in forming a general idea about the level of cultural and scientific development the Elizabethans had reached. An indisputable proof of the progress gardening was making during this period was the growing importance of those practicing the craft in and around London, until at length, at the beginning of King James Is reign, they attained the dignified position of a Company of the City of London, incorporated by Royal charter.In that year all those persons inhabiting within the Cittie of London and six miles compass thereof doe take upon them to use and practice the trade, craft or misterie of gardening, planting, grafting, setting, sowing, cutting, arboring, mounting, covering, fencing and removing of plants, herbs, seeds, fruit trees, stock sett, and of contriving the conveyances to the same belonging, were incorporated by the name of Master Wardens, Assistants and Comynaltie of the Company ofGardiners of London. The botanical interest of Elizabethan England was shared by most countries of the time, aspect which led to the creation of a strong bond in commerce and political relations. In consequence, this great delight in growing flowers for domestic decoration was a marked feature in English life at this period. Many travelers who visited the kingdom found themselves absolutely charmed with the English comfort and architectural artistry.In one of his works, published in The Touchstone of Complexions, Thomas Newton, an illustrious scholar of the time, quotes the Dutch explorer and physician Levimus Leminius, who came to England around 1560 Their domiciliate and parlors strewn over with sweet herbs refreshed me their nosegays finely intermingled with sundry sorts of fragrant flours, in their bed chambers and privy rooms with comfortable smell cheered me up and entirely delighted all the senses.