THE CURIOUS KNOTTED GARDEN 3 



Flower Lovers and Herbalists 



THE Elizabethan flower garden as an inde- 

 pendent garden came into existence about 

 1595. It was largely the creation of John 

 Parkinson (1567-1650), who seems to have been the 

 first person to insist that flowers were worthy of 

 cultivation for their beauty quite apart from their 

 value as medicinal herbs. Parkinson was also the 

 first to make of equal importance the four enclosures 

 of the period: (i) the garden of pleasant flowers; 

 (2) the kitchen garden (herbs and roots) ; (3) the 

 simples (medicinal) ; and (4) the orchard. 



One would hardly expect to find such esthetic 

 appreciation of flowers from Parkinson, because he 

 was an apothecary, with a professional attitude 

 toward plants; and our ideas of an Elizabethan 

 apothecary picture a dusty seller of narcotics and 

 "drams of poison," like the old man to whom Romeo 

 and Juliet repaired. 



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