The orchard was another feature of the Elizabethan garden. It was the custom for gentlemen to retire after dinner (which took place at eleven o'clock in the morning) to the garden arbor, or to the orchard, to partake of the "banquet" or dessert. Thus Shallow addressing Falstaff after dinner exclaims:
"Nay, you shall see mine orchard, where, in an arbor, we will eat a last year's pippin of my own grafting with a dish of carraways and so forth."[8]
[8] "King Henry IV"; Part II, Act V, Scene III.
The uses of the Elizabethan garden were many: to walk in, to sit in, to dream in. Here the courtier, poet, merchant, or country squire found refreshment for his mind and recreation for his body. The garden was also intended to supply flowers for nosegays, house decoration, and the decoration of the church. Sweet-smelling herbs and rushes were strewn upon the floor as we know by Grumio's order for Petruchio's homecoming in "The Taming of the Shrew." One of Queen Elizabeth's Maids of Honor had a fixed salary for keeping fresh flowers always in readiness. The office of "herb-strewer to her Majesty the Queen" was continued as late as 1713, through the reign of Anne and almost into that of George I.
The houses were very fragrant with flowers in pots and vases as well as with the rushes on the floor. Flowers were therefore very important features in house decoration. A Dutch traveler, Dr. Leminius, who visited England in 1560, was much struck by this and wrote:
"Their chambers and parlors strewed over with sweet herbs refreshed me; their nosegays finely intermingled with sundry sorts of fragrant flowers in their bed-chambers and private rooms with comfortable smell cheered me up and entirely delighted all my senses."
We have only to look at contemporary portraits to see how essential flowers were in daily life. For instance, Holbein's "George Gisze," a London merchant, painted in 1523, has a vase of choice carnations beside him on the table filled with scales, weights, and business paraphernalia.
The Elizabethan lady was just as learned in the medicinal properties of flowers and herbs as her Medieval ancestor. She regarded her garden as a place of delight and at the same time as of the greatest importance in the economic management of the household.
"The housewife was the great ally of the doctor: in her still-room the lady with the ruff and farthingale was ever busy with the preparation of cordials, cooling waters, conserves of roses, spirits of herbs and juleps for calentures and fevers. All the herbs and flowers of the field and garden passed through her fair white hands. Poppy-water was good for weak stomachs; mint and rue-water was efficacious for the head and brain; and even walnuts yielded a cordial. Then there was cinnamon water and the essence of cloves, gilliflower and lemon water, sweet marjoram water and the spirit of ambergris.
"These were the Elizabethan lady's severer toils, besides acres of tapestry she had always on hand. Her more playful hours were devoted to the manufacture of casselettes, month pastilles, sweet waters, odoriferant balls and scented gums for her husband's pipe (God bless her!) and there were balsams and electuaries for him to take to camp, if he were a soldier fighting in Ireland or in the Low Countries, and wound-drinks if he was a companion of Frobisher and bound against the Spaniard, or the Indian pearl-diver of the Pacific. She had a specific which was of exceeding virtue in all swooning of the head, decaying of the spirits, also in all pains and numbness of joints and coming of cold.