OF HERB GARDENS 3 



the Flemish immigrants in the early seventeenth century 

 introduced them. To them also we owe our present garden 

 spinach, which has had a long journey to reach us, for it is 

 said to have come from Asia through Spain. The wild 

 cabbage was used by our ancestors from Saxon days, and 

 one of the Saxon names for March was " sprout- kale 

 month " ; but otherwise the whole brassica tribe were 

 unknown to us till the late sixteenth and seventeenth 

 centuries. Sir Anthony Ashley, of Wimborne St. Giles, 

 Dorset, who died in 1627, has always had the reputation 

 of being the first to introduce the modern cabbage into 

 England, and on his tomb there is a cabbage portrayed at 

 his feet. His monument was seriously damaged by a fire 

 a few years ago, but fortunately the cabbage was saved ! 

 Mrs. Earle, in her Pot-pourri from a Surrey Garden, pointed 

 out that even as late as 1824 there were no roses and no 

 strawberries in our sense of the word. Samuel Hartlib, 

 writing in 1659, says : " About fifty years ago this art of 

 gardening began to creep into England, into Sandwich and 

 Surrey, Fulham and other places. Some old men in Surrey 

 where it flourisheth very much at present, report that they 

 knew the first gardeners that came into those parts to plant 

 cabbages, colleflowers and to sow turneps and carrots and 

 parsnips, and raith-rape peas, all which at that time were 

 great rarities, we having few or none in England but what 

 came from Holland and Flanders. These gardeners with 

 much ado procured a plot of good ground and gave no lesse 

 than eight pounds per acre; yet the gentleman was not 

 content, fearing they would spoil his ground because they 

 did use to dig it. So ignorant were they of gardening in 

 those days." 



The kitchen garden, therefore, as we know it, is quite 

 modern, and during the many centuries when " vegetables " 

 were almost unknown, our ancestors relied on the health- 

 giving properties of herbs. Even as late as the middle of 

 the last century the herb garden retained an honoured place, 

 and the old-fashioned herbs were still cherished for their 

 rare virtues. Like the wise man, described by Solomon, 



