So much for the "outlandish" flowers!
Turning now to the "English flowers," we find that Parkinson includes primroses and cowslips, single rose campions, white, red, and blush and the double red campion and the Flower of Bristow, or Nonesuch, "a kind of Campion, white and blush as well as orange-color." And here Parkinson stops a moment to talk about this Nonesuch, for he was so fond of it that he holds it in his hand in the portrait that appears as a frontispiece to his "Paradisus" and from which our reproduction is made. Of it he writes: "The orange color Nonesuch with double flowers as is rare and not common so for his bravery doth well deserve a Master of account that will take care to keep and preserve it."
Then he continues: Bachelors'-buttons, both white and red; wall-flowers, double and single; stock-gilliflowers, queen's gilliflowers (which some call dame's violets and some winter gilliflowers, a kind of stock-gilliflower); violets, "the spring's chief flowers for beauty, smell and use," both single and double; snap-dragons, "flowers of much more delight"; columbines, "single and double, of many sorts, fashions and colors, very variable, both speckled and parti-colored—no garden would willingly be without them." Next "Larks' heels, or spurs, or toes, as they are called, single and double"; pansies, or heartsease, of divers colors, "although without scent yet not without some respect and delight"; double poppies "adorning a garden with their variable colors to the delight of the beholders"; double daisies, "white and red, blush and speckled and parti-colored, besides that which is called Jack-an-Apes-on-Horseback," double marigolds; French marigolds "that have a strong, heady scent, both single and double, whose glorious show for color would cause any to believe there were some rare goodness or virtue in them; and carnations and gilliflowers."
Here again Parkinson's enthusiasm causes him to pause, for he exclaims:
"But what shall I say to the Queen of Delight and of Flowers, Carnations and Gilliflowers, whose bravery, variety and sweet smell joined together tieth every one's affection with great earnestness both to like and to have them?"
Of the overwhelming number he singles out the red and gray Hulo, the old carnation, the Grand Père; the Cambersive, the Savadge, the Chrystal, the Prince, the white carnation or delicate, the ground carnation, the French carnation, the Dover, the Oxford, the Bristow, the Westminster, the Daintie, the Granado, and the orange tawny gilliflower and its derivatives, the Infanta, the striped tawny, the speckled tawny, the flaked tawny, the Grifeld tawny, and many others.
Many sweet pinks are included, "all very sweet coming near the Gilliflowers, Sweet Williams and Sweet Johns," both single and double, red and spotted, "and a kind of wild pinks, which for their beauty and grace help to furnish a garden." Then, too, we have peonies, double and single; hollyhocks, single and double; and roses.
The Elizabethan gardens, therefore, presented a magnificent array of flowers; and it was not only in the grand gardens of castles and manor-houses, but in the estates of London merchants along the Strand and of the florists in Holborn, Westminster, and elsewhere that fine flower shows were to be enjoyed during every month of the year. In the country before the simple dwellings and the half-timbered and thatched cottages bright flowers blossomed in the same beauty and profusion as to-day.
The charming cottage garden has changed little.
Finally, in summing up, if we imagine as a background a group of Tudor buildings in the Perpendicular style of architecture of red brick broken with bay-windows and groups of quaint chimneys variously ornamented with zigzag and other curious lines, gables here and there—the whole façade rising above a terrace with broad flights of steps—one at the middle and one at each end—and from the terrace "forthrights" and paths intersecting and in the squares formed by them bright beds of flowers so arranged that the colors intermingle and blend so as to produce the effect of a rich mosaic and redolent with the sweetest perfumes all mingled with particular and peculiar care and art, we shall have a mental picture of the kind of garden that lay before Olivia's house in "Twelfth Night," where Malvolio parades up and down the "forthrights," as Shakespeare distinctly tells us, in his yellow cross-garters, to pick up the letter dropped on the path by Maria while the rollicking Sir Toby Belch, witless Sir Andrew Aguecheek, and merry Maria watch his antics from their hiding-place in the box-tree, or hedge.