A further post in my series republishing The Folklore of Herbs (1946), a book by Katherine Oldmeadow, who was a significant figure in the British pagan revival.

CHAPTER X.

HERB GARDENS OF THE PAST.

A modern writer on gardens has described their architecture as “a roof of trees, an upper storey of shrubs and a ground floor of herbs,” and in the gardens of the past the ground floors certainly answered to this description.

In them grew herbs for the pot, herbs for strewings and physic, and those lovely herbal flowers grown to delight the eye and to provide the fragrances and perfumes so necessary to the welfare of the people of the period.

The old monastery gardens were a place of peace, set apart for beauty and usefulness, enclosed by thick hedges or high walls and surrounded with banks planted with sweet-scented herbs.

In Tudor times, gardens and gardening became a fashionable craze, and pleasure gardens with experimental features were designed in the Italian manner.

Here is a description of the pleasure garden at St. Germain during the reign of Henri IV:

“The terrace, from which led two flights of steps, was so wide one could have ridden or driven down it. On the right, under the steps, a grotto had been artfully contrived, in the middle of which a fountain had been made of sea shells and coral.

“A griffin spouted out water, and nightingales, by a contrivance worked by the water, sang most charmingly. All sorts of shells were to be seen, and coral mingled with lovely coloured stones. When the water was turned on it gushed out of all the rocks and out of all the statues, which had been most tastefully placed in various positions, so that the spectacle was at the same time curious and charming. The floor was made of coloured pebbles which were so set that they formed innumerable little pipes, through which the water was forced up to the vaulted roof from which it fell again like heavy rain, so that one could neither stand above or below without being wetted. The walls were full of recesses in which all sort of figures stood in metal, marble, in shell work, nearly all of whom spouted out water. Many of the figures moved, such as smiths striking on an anvil, birds who sang and flapped their wings, lizards, and frogs and serpents, poised on the rocks, spouting water with many curious movements. In the middle of this grotto there was a figure of Neptune with his trident, who came out of a pool riding in a chariot. He could be seen to emerge on the surface, turn right round and disappear under the water. On the left hand of the steps another grotto had been constructed in which a water organ had been placed. Against the walls yellow roses made of shells were seen against a black background.”

What fun it must have been for the royal children of France to own a garden fountain like this one; and how the small Dauphin must have enjoyed turning on all the taps! No wonder that after breakfast – with a visit to the grotto in prospect – “he gave three jumps, one for Papa, one for Mamma, and one for Madame, his baby sister.”

English homes were surrounded by orchards and flower gardens made beautiful with every new plant that could be procured and induced to grow. Sailors were ordered to bring home the fruits and strange plants they saw in foreign lands, and such new-fangled vegetables as potatoes, and such fruits as apricots, figs, almonds, and peaches were brought by travellers from other countries.

It is comforting to hear that Thomas Cromwell did not spend all his time in destroying churches, for we are told he was an enthusiastic gardener and was the first to plant the seeds of rhubarb in an English garden.

That good gardening was the craze in the sixteenth century is proved by this little rhyme:

“In March or in April, from morning till night,

In sowing and setting good housewives delight!

Through cunning with dribble, rake, mattock and spade,

By line and by level a garden is made.”

The Tudor garden was certainly a place of delight, full of quaint conceits and with a formality and artificiality which suited the age. Terraces, smoothly green or decorated with stiff flower beds, stone steps, gates of delicately wrought iron leading to stately lawns. Rosaries, pleasaunces, bowling greens, mazes, arbours, fountains and lily pools.

Yew hedges clipped into the shapes of birds, ships, steeples, cocks and peacocks. Stone vases, statues, orchards set with beehives and dove cotes; and last, but not least, the herb garden, which supplied the kitchen with vegetables and flavourings and the family with physic and perfumes.

Above all things the Elizabethans loved a knot garden, where the beds were cut into quaint shapes and planted with sweet herbs, many coloured flowers and edged with box or yew, or sometimes with pebbles “to avoid earwicks,” insects abhorred by the Elizabethan maiden.

Francis Bacon, once Lord Chancellor of England, was a great lover of gardens, but he much disliked the fashionable knot gardens and the clipped trees of the period.

Of the latter he wrote: “They are for children,” and in speaking of knots, he said contemptuously: “You may see as good sights in tarts.”

Sometimes the knots were made of coloured earths, and the herbs grown in them were useful as well as beautiful. The Tudor gardeners would often work elaborate designs into their flower beds; rebuses, anagrams and signs of the Zodiac. Elizabethan – and Jacobean ladies, too, had a charming custom of carrying their embroidery frames into the garden and with their needles and silks, copying bright flowers, fruits and trees straight from nature on to their canvases, and no embroidery has ever been lovelier. It seems as if the lovely, peaceful gardens, filled with the songs of birds, the hum of bees and sweet fragrances inspired them.

The most delightful feature of those old gardens was the fact that they were well designed. Their mazes, greens, fountains, nut alleys, and rosaries were never meaningless nor formless. A return to formality in modern gardens sometimes leads to disaster because the necessity for design is not really understood. How often do we see a path of crazy paving leading to nowhere in particular, a dove cote without doves or a bird bath empty of water!

And yet the smallest of gardens, well-planned, can delight the eye and give pleasure to all who behold it.

Great men have always loved gardens; although one of them, Dr. Johnson, once said that his favourite flower was a cauliflower. The greatest of Englishmen, Shakespeare, made a beautiful garden at his house, New Place, where his own plan may still be traced.

Anne Hathaway’s cottage is surrounded by a garden full of charm and, in the best bedroom of the house, visitors are shown a bed with curtains of deep yellow linen, said to have been spun by Anne herself, and dyed their wonderful gold from flowers growing in the garden.

Sir Thomas More grew wild thyme for his bees in his garden at Chelsea, and in its peace and loveliness he probably wrote his Utopia.

Tudor taste tended towards the artificial and although most of us would like to own parts of Bacon’s ideal garden, there were features in it that seem incongruous to modern ideas.

“God Almighty first planted a garden, and indeed it is the purest of human pleasures …. and the gentlest refreshment to the spirit of man,” he writes in his famous essay “Of Gardens.”

Bacon’s dream garden was to show beauty in all seasons of the year. “And because the breath of flowers is far sweeter in the air (where it comes and goes like the warbling of music) than in the hand, therefore nothing is more fit for delight than to know what be the flowers to plant that do best perfume the air.”

To bring sweet fragrance into the garden he suggests that whole alleys should be set with burnet, wild thyme and water mints. This planting of paths with herbs was greatly in favour in Bacon’s time, and they were rolled and cropped and kept just as green and pleasant as grass lawns, and were sweetly fragrant when crushed underfoot.

Bacon’s garden was to be filled with the sweetest of flowers and herbs and with “wallflowers set under the chamber window.” We are of one mind with him that it would be a delight to have part of the garden wild, sweet with violets, primroses, wild strawberries and set with wild thyme. We should like his orchard and the stately arched hedge that surrounded the garden, but few of us would care to carry out his idea of “hanging a cage of birds” in every arch of the hedge. Nowadays we prefer to see the birds enjoying their freedom, but this again was the artificial touch of the age. Bacon disliked pools as much as he detested knots; and he complained that they were “full of frogs and flies.” He was determined there should be no fountain in his garden unless he could have one thirty or forty feet square “without any fish, slime or mud.”

One would have to be rich to make Bacon’s dream garden. It contained so much “carpenters’ work” and it must not be less than thirty acres in extent: in fact, as he says of it: “it is a garden planned to suit the pockets of princes.”

It would be good fun, especially for a child, planning a little herb garden of its own, to follow the example of Linnaeus and make a floral clock of herbs.

The round face of the clock would be drawn out upon the earth in a sunny spot, and the time of day would be told by the opening and closing of the flowers planted in it.

Yellow meadow goats’ beard wakes at 3 a.m.
Lesser hawkweed — 4 a.m.
Buttercup — 5 a.m.
Sow thistle — 6 a.m.
Scarlet pimpernel and succory — 7 a.m.
Mouse ear — 8 a.m.
Chickweed — 9 a.m.
Small pink mallow — 10 a.m.
Star of Bethlehem — 11 a.m.
Yellow goats’ beard sleeps 11 a.m.
Pink mallow — 12 noon.

Another garden plan, simple to carry out, would be one planted with all the herbs of the sun.

This could be marked out with the beds cut out as “rays,” with little paths between, of the sun’s fragrant and aromatic herb, camomile, kept closely cropped.

This garden should have a sun dial as a central ornament, surrounded by a golden garland of marigolds. The sun dial would be to represent the Deity of the garden.

A herb garden that a child could easily make and tend could be planned by dividing two wide beds by a paved or grassy path. One of the beds should contain a nosegay of the sweetest pot herbs and flowers: mallows, lavender, sweet williams, borage, catmint, clary, sweet rockets and love-in-a-mist; hollyhocks and the rosy pinks and blues of Canterbury bells. In the other bed could be grown the witches’ herbs, and at the entrance to the garden would stand two little rowan trees to give it the protection of the fairies.

This small herb garden should not be too well weeded, and the family dog and pussy cat should be able to find in it their favourite physic, the couch grass.

There should be groundsel, too, to provide the caged birds of friends with a little green refreshment, for in all gardens the Franciscan spirit should prevail.