EARLY TUDOR GARDENS 83 



laying-out of the flower-garden, the fruit and kitchen gardens 

 were not altogether neglected. Besides such fruits as were 

 already in common use, others were introduced, and those 

 indigenous in the country were improved. The strawberry was 

 largely planted, and carefully cultivated : 



" If frost do continue take this for a lawe. 

 The strawberies look to be covered with strawe 

 Laid overly trim, upon crotchis and bows 

 And after uncovered as weather allows."^ 



From the following verse, in September's husbandrie, it is clear 

 where the strawberry-plants were procured : 



" Wife unto thy garden and set me a plot 

 With strawbcry rootes of the best to be got. 

 Such growing abroade, among thornes in the wood, 

 Wei chosen and picked proove excellent good." 



It was not only for humble folk that wild-strawberry roots were 

 gathered, for, in the oft-quoted Hampton Court Accounts, 

 several entries occur of money paid for strawberry-roots, brought 

 from the woods for the King's garden. ^ 



The raspberry had until this period been more or less ignored, 

 and even now seems not to have been very generally grown. 

 Turner, in 1548, says of " Rubus ideus in Englishe raspeses or 

 hyndberies . . . growe most plentuously in the woddes in east 

 Freseland . . . they growe also in certayne gardines of Eng- 

 lande." He also says of them : " The taste of it is soure." 

 The gooseberry, which does not appear in earlier gardens, was 

 now grown. It was planted in some of Henry VIII. 's gardens 

 in 1516. Turner calls it " a groser bushe, a goosebery bushe," 

 and says of it : " It groweth only that I have sene in England, 

 in gardines, but I have sene it in Germany abrode in the fieldes 

 amonge other bushes." This passage is curious, as the subject 

 has frequently been discussed, whether the gooseberry is an 



^ Tusser, Five Hundred Pointes of Good Husbandrie. 



^ " Emptions of strowbery roots violettes and primerose roots for the 

 new garden — also paid to Ales Brewer and Margaret Rogers for gather- 

 ing of 34 bushels of strowberry roots, primerose and violettes at 3d. the 

 bushel, 8s. 6d. Item to Matthew Garrett of Kyngston for setting 

 of the said rootes and flowers by the space of 20 days at 3d. the 

 day, 5s." 



6—2 



