ELIZABETHAN FLOWER GARDEN . Ill 



building, while the patterns in the beds and mazes harmonized 

 with the details of the architecture. The peculiar geometric 

 tracery which surmounted so many Elizabethan houses, found 

 its counterpart in the designs of the flower-beds. "The 

 form that men like in general is a square," * and this shape 

 was chosen in preference to "an orbicular, a triangle, or an 

 oblong, because it doth best agree with a man's dwelling." t 

 This square garden was usuall}^ enclosed by a high brick or 

 stone wall. " He hath a garden circummured with brick." % 

 The picture which does duty both in Thomas Hill's Gardener's 

 Labyrinth, and in his Art of Gardening, shows a square 

 garden with a paling round it. Another illustration, which 

 appears three tim.es in the Gardener's Labyrinth, gives a 

 brick w^all; while, in a third, the garden is enclosed by a 

 hedge. The custom of covering the walls with rosemary w'as 

 "exceedingly common in England." § At Hampton Court 

 rosemary was "so planted and nailed to the walls as to cover 

 them entirely." Gerard || and Parkinson both refer to the 

 custom of planting against brick w-alls. In the North of 

 England, according to Lawson, the garden-walls were made 

 of " drie earthe," and it was usual to plant "thereon wall- 

 flowers and divers sweet-smelling plants." 



Bacon has a more magnificent plan : — " The garden is best to 

 be square, encompassed on all four sides with a stately arched 

 hedge. The arches to be upon pillars of carpenter'svvork, of 

 some ten foot high, and six foot broad, and the spaces between 

 of the same dimension with the breadth of the arch," This 

 "fair hedge" of Bacon's ideal garden was to be raised 

 upon a bank, set w^ith flowers, and little turrets above the 

 arches, with a space to receive " a cage of birds " ; — "and 

 over every space between the arches, some other little figure, 

 with broad plates of round coloured glass, gilt, for the sun to 

 play upon." It is not likely that such fantastical ornaments 

 to a hedge were usual, though it reminds one of the arched 



* Lawson, Neiv Oyc/inrd, i6iS. -j- Parkinson. 



^ Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, act i\'. scene i. 

 § Hentzuers Travels. 1598. 



II Gerard is spelt Gerarde on the engraved title of his herbal, but he signs 

 the Preface without the e. 



