100 A HISTORY OF GARDENING IN ENGLAND 



there amongst them. . . . Some plant cornel trees and plash 

 them or keep them low to form them into a hedge ; and some 

 again take a low prickly shrub that abideth always green, called 

 in Latin Pyracantha."^ Of the cypress, Parkinson writes : 

 '* For the goodly proportion this tree beareth. as also for his 

 ever grene head, it is and hath beene of great account with 

 all princes, both beyond and on this side of the sea, to plant 

 them in rowes on both sides of some spatious walke, which, by 

 reason of their highe growing, and little spreading, must be 

 planted the thicker together, and so they give a pleasant and 

 sweet shadow." Gerard, writing of the same plant, says : " It 

 groweth likewise in diuers places in Englande, where it hath 

 beene planted, as at Sion, a place neere London, sometime a 

 house of nunnes ; it groweth also at Green^\^ch and at other 

 places ; and likewise at Hampstead in the garden of Master 

 Waide, one of the Clarkes of hir Maiesties Priuy Counsell." 



Many of the walks and alleys were " shadowed over with 

 vaulting or arch-hearbes."^ Bacon thus explains the object of 

 making " these pleached alleys," or " covert " walks. " But 

 because the alley will be long, and in the great heat of the year 

 or day you ought not to buy the shade in the garden by going 

 in the sun through the greene (you ought) to plant a covert 

 alley upon carpenter's work, about twelve foot in height, by 

 which you may go in shade into the garden." The " thick- 

 pleached alley," in which Antonio saw Don Pedro and Claudio 

 walking, in Much Ado About Nothing, was one of this sort. The 

 word " pleach," or " plash," or " impleach," is from the French 

 plesser, from plexum, to plait, infold, or interweave. It is 

 used by Shakespeare, not only for cut and intwined trees, 

 as in this case, but also for braided hair (" their hair with 

 twisted metal amorously impleach'd," in A Lover's Cojuplaint) 

 and for arms enfolded (" with pleacht armes, bendinge down," 

 in Antony and Cleopatra). 



The plants used to form these shady walks were willows, 

 limes, wych-elms, hornbeam, cornel, privet, or whitethorn, also 

 " the great maple or sycamore tree cherished in our land only 

 in orchards, or elsewhere, for shade and walks." ... " It is 

 altogether planted for shady walks, and hath no other use with 

 ^ Thomas Hill, Gardener's Labyrinth. ^ Ibid. 



