"... Daffodils,
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty; violets dim,
But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes,
Or Cytherea's breath; pale primroses,
That die unmarried ere they can behold
Bright Phœbus in his strength.
"'For March,' writes Bacon, 'there come violets, especially the single blue, which are the earliest ... and which, above all other flowers, yields the sweetest smell in the air; also the yellow daffodil.' 'Lilies of all sorts, the flowre-de-luce being one,' says Perdita. 'Flower-de-Luces, and lilies of all natures,' echoes Bacon.
"Near the Wild Bank later on there may, perhaps, be planted some of those specimens of the topiary art, which were so general in Jacobean gardens. Even Bacon would admit them into his 'Princely Garden.' 'Little low hedges (of box or yew),' he writes, 'round like welts, with some pretty pyramids, I like well, and in some places fair columns.' But he would confine them to geometric patterns: 'I, for my part, do not like images cut out in juniper or other garden stuff, they be for children.' But then Shakespeare had children and grandchildren; and, besides, many children of the present day will visit his garden, much taken, we may be sure, with such curious devices, and delighting in our simple sweet old English flowers—very few of them, it is to be hoped, serious little prigs, bursting with botany....
THE "KNOTT GARDEN"
"It is now necessary to say a few words about the 'Knott Garden'—an enclosure which, being an invariable adjunct to every house of importance in Shakespeare's time, is the most essential part of the reconstruction, on Elizabethan lines, of the ground about New Place. It need not, however, engage us long: for M. Forestier's beautiful drawing of it represents it as it is to be, better than any amount of wordy description.
"The whole is closely modeled on the designs and views shown in the contemporary books on gardening; and for every feature there is unimpeachable warrant. The enclosing palisade—a very favorite device of the Jacobean gardeners—of Warwickshire oak, cleft, is exactly copied from the one in the famous tapestry of the 'Seven Deadly Sins' at Hampton Court. And here again Bacon's advice has been useful: 'The garden is best to be square, encompassed on all four sides with a stately arched hedge, the arches on pillars of carpenter's work, of some 10 foot high, and 6 foot broad.' The 'tunnel,' or 'pleachéd bower, where honeysuckles, ripened by the sun, forbid the sun to enter'—follows ancient models, especially the one shown in the old contemporary picture in New Place Museum.
"The dwarf wall, of old-fashioned bricks—hand-made, sun-dried, sand-finished, with occasional 'flarers,' laid in the Tudor bond, with wide mortar joints—is based on similar ones, still extant, of the period. The balustrade is identical, in its smallest details, with one figured in Didymus Mountain's 'Gardener's Labyrinth,' published in 1577—a book Shakespeare must certainly have consulted when laying out his own Knott Garden. The paths are to be of old stone from Wilmcote, the home of Shakespeare's mother. The intricate, interlacing patterns of the Knott beds—'the Knottes so enknotted it cannot be expressed,' as Cavendish says of Wolsey's garden—are taken, one from Mountain's book; two from Gervase Markham's 'Country Housewife's Garden' (1613); and one from William Lawson's 'New Orchard and Garden' (1618); and they are composed, as enjoined by those authorities, of box, thrift, lavender-cotton, and thyme, with their inter-spaces filled in with flowers.
ROYAL ROSES FOR THE KNOTTED BEDS
"In one point the Trustees have been able to 'go one better' than Shakespeare in his own 'curious knotted garden'—to use his own expression in 'Love's Labour's Lost.' For neither King James, nor his Queen, Anne of Denmark, nor Henry Prince of Wales sent him—so far as we know—any flowers for his garden. On his 356th birthday, however, there will be planted four old-fashioned English rose-trees—one in the center of each of the four 'knotted' beds—from King George, Queen Mary, Queen Alexandra, and the Prince of Wales. Surely Shakespeare, could he have known it, would have been touched by this tribute!
"They will be planted by Lady Fairfax-Lucy, the heiress of Charlecote, and the direct lineal descendant of the Sir Thomas Lucy whose deer he is said to have poached, and who is supposed to have had him whipped for his offense, and who is believed to be satirized in the character of 'Justice Shallow.' This also might well have moved him!