40 THE SHAKESPEARE GARDEN 



II 



The Elizabethan Garden 



The Elizabethan garden was usually four-square, 

 bordered all around by hedges and intersected by 

 paths. There was an outer hedge that enclosed the 

 entire garden and this was a tall and thick hedge 

 made of privet, sweetbrier, and white thorn inter- 

 mingled with roses. Sometimes, however, this outer 

 hedge was of holly. Again some people preferred 

 to enclose their garden by a wall of brick or stone. 

 On the side facing the house the gate was placed. 

 In stately gardens the gate was of elaborately 

 wrought iron hung between stone or brick pillars on 

 the top of which stone vases, or urns, held brightly 

 blooming flowers and drooping vines. In simple 

 gardens the entrance was a plain wooden door, 

 painted and set into the wall or hedge like the quaint 

 little doors we see in England to-day and represented 

 in Kate Greenaway's pictures that show us how the 

 style persists even to the present time. 



Stately gardens were usually approached from a 

 terrace running along the line of the house and com- 

 manding a view of the garden, to which broad flights 

 of steps led. Thence extended the principal walks, 



