CHAPTER VI. 



ELIZABETHAN FLOWER GARDEN. 



" Like a banquetting house built in a garden, 

 On which the spring's chaste flowers take delight 

 To cast their modest odours." 



MIDDLETON, Marriage. 



'T^HE reign of Elizabeth was a golden era in English history, 

 and abounded in men of genius. Among the many 

 branches of art, science, and industry, to which they turned 

 their attention, none profited more from the power of their 

 great minds, than did the Art of Gardening. Bacon's Essay on 

 Gardens is familiar to everyone. Lord Burghley was the patron 

 of Gerard, one of the greatest of English herbalists, and to 

 Sir Walter Raleigh we owe the introduction of our most useful 

 vegetable, the potato. 



About this time the persecution of the Protestants on the 

 Continent drove many of them to find a safe refuge in 

 England. They brought with them some of the foreign ideas 

 about gardening, and thus helped to improve the condition 

 of Horticulture. 



The Elizabethan garden was the outcome of the older 

 fashions in English gardens, combined with the new ideas 

 imported from France, Italy, and Holland. The result was a 

 purely national style, better suited to this country than a 

 slavish imitation of the terraced gardens of Italy, or of those 

 of Holland, with their canals and fish-ponds. There was 

 no breaking-away from old forms and customs, no sudden 

 change. The primitive mediseval garden grew into the pleasure 

 garden of the early Tudors, which, by a process of slow and 

 gradual development, eventually became the more elaborate 



