90 ENGLISH PLEASURE GARDENS 



The flowery The flowery mede, or a grass plot thickly dotted with 



med.6 



flowers, was perhaps the simplest form of a garden, 

 and the one first known to our mediaeval ancestors. 



" Ful gay was all the ground and queynt, 

 And poudred as men had it peynt 

 With many a fresshe and sondrie floure, 

 That casten up ful goc>d savour." 



There is a good representation of this kind of plant- 

 ing with but slight indications of beds in the wonder- 

 ful series of fourteenth-century tapestries preserved 

 at the Cluny Museum. The lady with her hand- 

 maiden, and her pet falcon, dogs, monkeys, and rabbits, 

 is standing on a plot of flowery greensward, enclosed 

 by a railed wooden fence overgrown with roses. This 

 plot, as may be discerned, consisted of a circular bed 

 carpeted with thick grass intermingled with low-grow- 

 ing flowers such as daisies, violets, hyacinths, and pinks. 

 It is brought out more or less clearly in different 

 sections of the tapestry. Such a 

 pr'eau, or bit of meadow convention- 

 alized, was a common and very 

 delightful portion of the pleasaunce. 

 Of late years it has been reproduced 

 in modern gardens, 

 subdm- i^Vx^gxy- -^| Gradually, as the cultivated ground 



sions. 



extended, it came to be divided into compartments. 

 These subdivisions were usually formed of latticework 



