32 8 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS 



ated in Charlemagne's Capitulare de Villis^ as ordained to be 

 cultivated within his dominions. 



The fruit trees in the cemetery are planted around the graves of 

 the friars, and between the monuments. The flower, i.e. herb or 

 physic garden, is on the other side of the house (not shown in this 

 half of the plan) appropriately near the doctors' quarters in the N.E. 

 angle of the monastery : this contains sixteen beds of herbs and 

 flowers also identical with those named in the Capitulary. As the 

 monks were bound by their vows to live upon pulse, vegetables and 

 fruit gathered by themselves, the importance of these gardens 

 in the monastic economy was considerable.^ A more detailed 

 account of the contents of the Garden at this date is given in 

 the poem ' Hortulus ' by Walafridus Strabo (afterwards abbot of 

 the monastery) dedicated in a.d. 849 to the then abbot, Grimald.^ 



' The gardens in the early part of the Norman Dynasty were 

 certainly not different from what we now term orchards. Com- 

 paratively few fruit trees or esculent plants were known in 

 England till even the latter centuries. But near the castles 

 (as at Conway) and monasteries, a small enclosure was reserved 

 for the ladies or for the abbot, which was surrounded by lofty 

 walls, sometimes decorated with paintings, and filled with roses 

 and other fragrant plants.' ^ 



Brithnod, the first Abbot of Ely, a.d. i 107, was celebrated for 

 his skill in horticulture, and laid out very extensive gardens 

 and orchards;'* and Neckam, in the same century, rhetorically 

 catalogues the fruit, flowers and vegetables which should adorn 

 * a noble garden.' ^ 



For the best descriptions in English of mediaeval gardens we 

 must consult Chaucer and Lydgate, or the * King's Quhair,' by 



^ See the late Professor Willis's paper published in Archceological Journal 

 vol. v., with the facsimile of the original plan and a modernised and anglicised 

 form. 



2 Strabi Fuldensis * Hortulus' per Venerabilem Bedam, Nuremberg, 1512. 



^ Dallaway's ' Supplementary Anecdotes to Gardening in England.' 



^ G. W. Johnson, ' History of English Gardening.' 



^ See ante p. 30. 



