^ The Scented Qarden $£ 



Queen Henrietta Maria's cook gives a recipe for worm- 

 wood wine, made by putting two pounds of dried worm- 

 wood in two gallons of Rhenish wine, leaving it to ' digest ' 

 for three or four months, ' shaking the vessel often,' and 

 then, when settled, decanting the clear tincture. 



Mugwort {A. vulgaris) is one of our commonest weeds, 

 and was highly valued by our Saxon ancestors. In a 

 Saxon herbal it is described as ' eldest of worts,' and a 

 powerful protection against evil spirits. In the Grete 

 Herball (1526) we find, ' If this herbe be within a house 

 there shall no wycked spyryte abyde.' It was formerly 

 used not only medicinally but to flavour beer. 



Santolina cbamaecyparissus (Lavender Cotton) was 

 also cultivated in England in the sixteenth century, and 

 how long before we do not know. It is a native of the 

 Mediterranean, but unlike southernwood it flowers freely 

 in this country. It is so commonly grown that we scarcely 

 appreciate its beauty. It is one of the best of the small 

 shrubs, either for edging or for laying out the design in 

 a * Knot ' garden. In Elizabethan and Stuart times 

 lavender cotton was commonly used for the making of 

 the dwarf shrub mazes which were such a charming 

 feature of gardens in those days. Thomas Hyll, in his 

 Profitable Arte of Gardening (1568), gives two designs for 

 these aromatic dwarf shrub mazes : ' And there be some 

 whiche set their Mazes with Lavender Cotton, Spike, 

 Marjerome and such lyke.' During the latter years of the 

 seventeenth century, small gardens laid out in the form 

 of a sundial, the numerals being set out in small shrubs, 

 were a fashionable ' conceit.' Lavender cotton would 

 certainly have been used for this purpose and possibly the 

 1 living sundials,' depicted in Loggan's Oxonia Illustrata 

 146 



