28 
A HISTORY OF GARDENING IN ENGLAND 
afforded. But, alas ! there are few gardens in existence which 
can give any idea of what these were really like. A thick 
hedge or a fish-pond is generally the only survival. The wall 
enclosing a corner of the garden at Ashridge is part of the old 
cloister, and near it there is also a fine yew hedge surrounding 
another small piece of garden. These, if not actually the same 
as in the days when the place was a monastery, are on the 
same lines, and have been kept as gardens ever since the days 
when the monks enjoyed the solitude of the cloister. In like 
manner here and there throughout the country some slight 
but pleasing trace of the old monastic garden has been re¬ 
tained. The times we have been considering were periods of 
constant strife, when the cloister was the only place in which 
quiet and retirement could be found, and to those who sought 
refuge within its walls, how dear must those peaceful hours in 
their gardens have been ! Perhaps some inmate of Sopwell 
(a cell of St. Albans) was too fond of early morning or late 
evening strolls in the garden, for Abbot Michael (about 1338) 
made the rule that in winter “ the garden-door be not opened 
(for walking) before the hour of prime, or first hour of devotion : 
—and in summer that the garden and the parlour doors 
be not opened until the hour of none (? nine) in the morning :— 
and to be always shut when the corfue rings.” 1 
Even the warlike Hospitaller Orders, the Templars, and 
Knights of St. John, contributed something towards the im¬ 
provement of Horticulture. 2 In their wanderings in the East 
during the Crusades, they may have remembered some garden 
in England, and brought back plants for it, as, for example, 
the splendid Oriental plane at Ribston, the planting of which 
tradition attributes to the Templars. The surveys of the 
manors all over the kingdom belonging to these Orders show 
the large number of gardens of which they were possessed. 
At the Chancery of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem in 
England, in Clerkenwell, there was a garden in the time of 
Prior Philip de Thame (in 1338) which was still existing in 
1 Rev. Peter Newcome, History of St. Albans, p. 468. 
2 The Knights of St. John of Jerusalem and the Templars, also the 
Cistercians, were exempted from payment of the tithe of the gardens 
(Fuller, Church History). 
