104 A HISTORY OF GARDENING IN ENGLAND 



may," writes Thomas Hill, 1 " make the herbers either 

 straight or running up, or else vaulted or close over the head, 

 like to the vine herbers now adaies made. And if they be made 

 with juniper-wood, you neede to repaire nothing thereof for 

 ten years after ; but if they be made with willow poles, then must 

 you new repaire them euery 3 yeare after. And he which will 

 set Roses to run about his herber, or beds round about his, must 

 set them in Februarie. . . . And in the like manner you may 

 doe, if you will sowe that sweet tree or flower named Jacemine, 

 Rosemary, or the Pomegranate seedes, unless you had rather 

 decke your herbers comelier with vines." Parkinson enume- 

 rates some of the other plants used for arbours. " The Jaci- 

 mine, white and yellow, the double Honeysocke, the Ladies' 

 Bower, both white and red and purple, single and double, are 

 the fittest of outlandish plants to be set by arbours and ban- 

 quetting-houses that are open both before and above, to help 

 to cover them, and to give both sight, smell, and delight." The 

 " Ladies' Bower " is Clematis Vitalba, or " traveller's joy," and 

 some five foreign species of Clematis. 2 Kidney beans were also 

 employed. They " do easily and soone spring up, and growe into 

 a very great length ; being sowen neere vnto long poles fastened 

 hard by them or hard by arbors and banquetting places." 3 



Parkinson describes a curious arbour made in a lime-tree. 

 That tree, he says, " is planted to make goodly arbours, and 

 summer banqueting-houses, either below upon the ground, the 

 boughs serving very handsomely to plash round about it, or up 

 higher for a second above it, and a third also." He goes on to 

 explain the " goodliest spectacle that ever " his eyes beheld 

 was at Cobham, in Kent, where an arbour was made in this way ; 

 boards to tread on were laid on the first series of boughs 8 feet 

 from the ground, the stem again kept bare of branches another 

 8 or 9 feet, and a second lot of branches plashed to form the 

 roof of the middle, and the floor of yet a third arbour, and 

 stairs arranged to mount up to it ; the arbour, he says, would 

 hold " half a hundred men at the least." 4 The following lines 

 in Spenser's Faerie Queene convey to the mind a more vivid 

 impression of an Elizabethan arbour than the sight of the 



1 Art of Gardening. 2 Paradisus, p. 392. 



3 Gerard's Herbal, p. 1141. * Paradisus, p. 610. 



