DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.49977#0131
CHAPTER VI.
ELIZABETHAN FLOWER GARDEN.
“ Like a banquetting house built in a garden,
On which the spring’s chaste flowers take delight
To cast their modest odours.”
Middleton, Marriage.
rPHE reign of Elizabeth was a golden era in English history,
1 and abounded in men of genius. Among the many
branches of art, science, and industry, to which they turned
their attention, none profited more from the power of their
great minds, than did the Art of Gardening. Bacon’s Essay on
Gardens is familiar to everyone. Lord Burghley was the patron
of Gerard, one of the greatest of English herbalists, and to
Sir Walter Raleigh we owe the introduction of our most useful
vegetable, the potato.
About this time the persecution of the Protestants on the
Continent drove many of them to find a safe refuge in
England. They brought with them some of the foreign ideas
about gardening, and thus helped to improve the condition
of Horticulture.
The Elizabethan garden was the outcome of the older
fashions in English gardens, combined with the new ideas
imported from France, Italy, and Holland. The result was a
purely national style, better suited to this country than a
slavish imitation of the terraced gardens of Italy, or of those
of Holland, with their canals and fish-ponds. There was
no breaking-away from old forms and customs, no sudden
change. The primitive mediaeval garden grew into the pleasure
garden of the early Tudors, which, by a process of slow and
gradual development, eventually became the more elaborate
ELIZABETHAN FLOWER GARDEN.
“ Like a banquetting house built in a garden,
On which the spring’s chaste flowers take delight
To cast their modest odours.”
Middleton, Marriage.
rPHE reign of Elizabeth was a golden era in English history,
1 and abounded in men of genius. Among the many
branches of art, science, and industry, to which they turned
their attention, none profited more from the power of their
great minds, than did the Art of Gardening. Bacon’s Essay on
Gardens is familiar to everyone. Lord Burghley was the patron
of Gerard, one of the greatest of English herbalists, and to
Sir Walter Raleigh we owe the introduction of our most useful
vegetable, the potato.
About this time the persecution of the Protestants on the
Continent drove many of them to find a safe refuge in
England. They brought with them some of the foreign ideas
about gardening, and thus helped to improve the condition
of Horticulture.
The Elizabethan garden was the outcome of the older
fashions in English gardens, combined with the new ideas
imported from France, Italy, and Holland. The result was a
purely national style, better suited to this country than a
slavish imitation of the terraced gardens of Italy, or of those
of Holland, with their canals and fish-ponds. There was
no breaking-away from old forms and customs, no sudden
change. The primitive mediaeval garden grew into the pleasure
garden of the early Tudors, which, by a process of slow and
gradual development, eventually became the more elaborate