Then I should have liked to have known the great gardens of Kenilworth, where proud Dudley entertained the Maiden Queen.
There, according to Master Humphrey Martin, every fruit tree had its place. In the centre of the pleasaunce stood, he wrote, an aviary and a fountain of white marble, where tench, bream, and carp, eel and perch “all did play pleasantly,” and “beside which delicious fruits, cherries, strawberries, might be eaten from the stalk.”
In the Elizabethan garden men were not content with gay blossoms alone; sweet odours were necessary to complete their standard of delight.
Bacon wrote, because the breath of flowers is “farr sweeter in the air, where it comes, and goes, like the warbling of music, then in the hand, so there is nothing more fit for delight than to know what be the flowers and plants that doe best perfume the aire.” He recommended amongst other sweet scents, two specially, that of violets, and the perfume of dying strawberry leaves, “an excellent cordial in autumn.” He also mentioned the perfume of sweet-briar, and recommended that wallflowers should be planted under a parlour or lower chamber window.
Andrew Borde, writing in the same century, declared that it was deemed necessary for the country house of his time to be surrounded by orchards well-filled with sundry fruits and commodious, and to have a fair garden “repleat with herbs aromatic and redolent of savours.”
Markham also talked of the nosegay garden, which was to be planted with violets, and gilly-flowers, marigolds, lilies, daffodils, hyacinths, “tulipas,” narcissus, and the like. There were to be knots, or parterres of delightful interlacing patterns, and amongst the ribbon borders such sweet plants and flowers as thyme, pinks, gilly-flowers, and thrift, all neatly bordered and edged, with turrets and arbours to repose in.
Thomas Hill, writing in 1568, also suggested that there should be parterres filled with hyssop, thyme, and lavender, for the pleasure of the perfume. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries folks sought their flowers in their gardens, which it can well be imagined was a much healthier form of enjoyment than the modern one of masses of flowers in stuffy rooms and of having tables laden with strong-smelling blossoms, during hot and crowded banquets.
The delight in the garden was essentially a sixteenth and seventeenth century pride. Lawson exclaimed, “What can your eye desire to see, your ear to hear, your mouth to taste, or your nose to smell, that is not to be had in a garden, with abundance of beauty?”
Lawson also loved the birds, as did the Scotch poet king, and Chaucer, and, in the early nineteenth century, Shelley and Keats. He wrote lovingly of a brood of nightingales that turned his orchard into a paradise. “The voice of the cock bird,” he declared, “did bear him company, both day and night.”
Then I should have liked to have visited Gerard in his physic garden in Holborn, overlooking the Fleet, and how delightful it would have been to have had a chat with the old man, or to have brought him some new plant or flower.