6 A GARDEN OF HERBS 



a quiet enclosure full of sunlight, and delicious scents, and 

 plants whose peace is never disturbed; and where the 

 humblest of newcomers can always find its own niche, and 

 a welcome from the older inhabitants. If ever we revive 

 the beautiful old English herb garden, it is to be hoped that 

 it will be the garden of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries 

 which will claim its old place in our affections, for at no time 

 were herb gardens more beautiful. They were square 

 enclosures surrounded by a wall or a very thick hedge, and 

 all round was a bank of earth planted with sweet-smelling 

 herbs. At intervals recesses were cut to serve as seats, and 

 they were covered with turf, " thick yset and soft as any 

 velvet," or camomile. This idea of a bank of earth thrown 

 up all round was borrowed from the thirteenth-century 

 monastic gardens, nearly all of which had them, and they 

 were soon copied in all the gardens. How thick the hedges 

 were may be gathered from the old poem, " The Flower 

 and the Leaf." 



" The hegge as thicke as a castle wall, 

 That who that list without to stond or go 

 Though he would all day prien to and fro, 

 He should not see if there were any wight within or no." 



Sometimes there was a pergola or covered way round 

 three sides of the wall, but more commonly only on one side. 

 Illustrations of these covered ways may be seen in the old 

 missals. The covered-in alley of the Dutch garden in 

 Kensington gardens is just like an illustration from The 

 second booke of Flowers, Fruits, Beastes, Birds and Flies 

 (1650), and would be a very good model for any one wishing 

 to mal"3 one of the old covered ways. There was usually 

 a cistern or simple fountain in some part of the garden, and 

 nearly always a " herber." This herber, one hastens to 

 add, bore little or no resemblance to that modern atrocity 

 the summer-house, for herbers consisted merely of poles 

 with rosemary or sweetbriar or dog-roses growing over 

 them. As in Chaucer's day the herber might have a medlar 

 tree growing by it, and for seats inside the low-growing 

 camomile, or just turf. Dethicke suggested that herbers 



