MEDIEVAL GARDENS 



no easy matter, if we may judge from the vivid 

 description to be found in Huon de Bordeaux, 

 a poem concerning a Bordelais lord of the ninth 

 century. After sundry adventures, Huon sets 

 out on a journey to Babylon, and seeks an 

 audience with the Emir. He tells of his 

 arrival at what he describes as the castle, and 

 how, after long parley with the porter, the 

 drawbridge is let down and the great gate 

 opened, and he finds himself in an arched way, 

 with a series of portcullises showing their teeth 

 overhead. After further parley, and further 

 opening of gates, he enters a large courtyard, 

 and goes thence into the garden, which is 

 planted with every kind of tree, aromatic herb, 

 and sweet-scented flower. In the garden is a 

 fountain with its little channelled way, supplied 

 with water from the Earthly Paradise. This 

 description may seem a little fantastic, but it is 

 only the poet's way of telling us what we might 

 ourselves experience if we would go in imagina- 

 tion to some thirteenth- or fourteenth-century 

 castle, and seek to gain admittance. 



Sometimes the garden was within the castle 

 fortifications. It was then necessarily circum- 

 scribed, and would, more or less, be laid out 

 with formal pathways and stone-curbed borders, 

 also with trees cut in various devices (a reminder 

 of Rome's once far-reaching influence), and a 

 tunnel or pergola of vines or sweet-scented 

 creepers running the length of the wall to form 

 a covered walk for shelter against sunshine or 



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