8o ENGLISH PLEASURE GARDENS 



on the top of Holborn Hill and received from them a 

 considerable revenue. Fitzstephen, in his life of 

 Thomas a Becket, speaking of the suburban residences 

 of the citizens of London, says, " On all sides outside 

 the houses of the citizens who dwell in the suburbs 

 there are adjoining gardens planted with trees, both 

 spacious and pleasing to the eye." As the various 

 colleges were founded, vineyards and herbaria (the 

 beginnings of botanical gardens) were laid out in their 

 neighbourhood, so that by the early part of the 

 fourteenth century many fine orchards and gardens 

 had become established, not only by the religious com- 

 munities, but by the secular owners of the land. 

 John de Gar- An Englishman, John de Garlande, who lived in 



lande's de- 



scriptionof Paris during the first half of the thirteenth century, 



a bourgeois . . . 



garden. gave a description in his " Dictionanus of the contents 

 of a town garden in either France or England. "In 

 Master John's garden are these plants: sage, parsley, 

 dittany, hyssop, celandine, fennel, pellitory, the rose, the 

 lily, and the violet; and at the side (i.e. in the hedge) 

 the nettle thistles and foxgloves. His garden also 

 contains medicinal herbs; namely, mercury and the 

 mallow agrimony, with nightshade and the marigold." 

 There was besides a garden for pot-herbs, where grew 

 borage, leeks, garlic, mustard, onions, cibols, and scallions ; 

 and in his shrubbery grew pimpernel, mouse-ear, self-heal, 

 buglos, adder's-tongue, and " other herbs good for men's 



