CHAPTER VI 



THE ELIZABETHAN FLOWER GARDEN 



" Like a banquetting house built in a garden. 

 On which the spring's chaste flowers take delight 

 To cast their modest odours." 



Middleton : Marriage. 



THE reign of Elizabeth was a golden era in English history, 

 and abounded in men of genius. Among the many 

 branches of art, science, and industry to which they turned 

 their attention, none profited more from the power of their 

 great minds than did the Art of Gardening. Bacon's Essay on 

 Gardens is familiar to everyone. Lord Burghley was the patron 

 of Gerard, one of the greatest of English herbalists, and to 

 Sir Walter Raleigh is due the introduction of that most 

 prolific and profitable vegetable — the potato. 



About this time the persecution of the Protestants on the 

 Continent drove many of them to find a safe refuge in Eng- 

 land. They brought with them some of the foreign ideas 

 about gardening, and thus helped to improve the condition 

 of Horticulture. 



The Elizabethan garden was the outcome of the older 

 fashions in English gardens combined with the new ideas 

 imported from France, Italy, and Holland. The result was a 

 purely national style, better suited to this country than a 

 slavish imitation of the terraced gardens of Italy or of those 

 of Holland, with their canals and fish-ponds. There was no 

 breaking-away from old forms and customs, no sudden change. 

 The primitive medieval garden grew into the pleasure-garden 

 of the early Tudors, which by a process of slow and gradual 

 development eventually became the more elaborate garden of 



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