AND CELEBRATED GARDENS 



These travellers brought back with them to this country the 

 seeds and roots of foreign plants and herbs, which quickly adapted 

 themselves to our climate : and as Elizabeth, who is said to 

 have loved flowers, like her father encouraged gardening, when 

 once the fame of Raleigh's collections had spread abroad it will 

 be seen when we come to the Chelsea " Physicke Garden" that 

 more than one distinguished botanist and horticulturalist was 

 attracted to this country from the Continent. 



The orchard, in Elizabethan times, is frequently mentioned, and 

 would almost appear to be synonymous with the garden. In 

 Much Ado About Nothing, Hero, standing with Margaret in 

 Leonato's garden, in which the scene is laid, bids her go seek out 

 Beatrice, and 



" Whisper her ear and tell her, I and Ursula 

 Walk in the orchard, and our whole discourse 

 Is all of her : say that thou overheard'st us 

 And bid her steal into the pleached bower, 

 Where honeysuckles, ripen'd by the sun, 



Forbid the sun to enter . 



. * there will she hide her, 



To listen to our purpose." 



The 'pleached" (i.e., the intertwined and interwoven bower) 

 the maze, and the bowling-green, were all indispensable adjuncts of 

 the pleasure-grounds attached to the abode of any person of 

 social importance. 



The word " arbour," which, as previously remarked, had to us 

 a doubtful meaning as employed in Chaucer's time, had in Shake- 

 speare's day certainly come to be used more in our modern sense. 

 The arbour was then commonly constructed of timber. 

 Henry VIII., in the Privy Purse expenses in 1593, was charged 

 live shillings for the making of an arbour at " Baynardes Castell." 



I think it is only in the same restricted sense that Shakespeare, 

 in the passage quoted above, put into Hero's mouth the word 

 ' bower." He means an arbour in the modern sense, but a rather 

 large one. Such a " bower " Horace Walpole had in mind when 

 planning his garden at Strawberry Hill more than one hundred 

 and fifty years later. He wrote : " My bower is determined, but 

 not at all what it should be. ... I had determined that the outside 

 should be of treillage (trellis). . . . Rosamond's bower, as you 



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