6o 
A HISTORY OF GARDENING IN ENGLAND 
French, but this treatise concerns the farm more than the 
garden. 1 
Necham, who lived at the same time as Grosseteste, was a 
more original writer. He was born in 1157, passed the early 
part of his life at St. Albans, and was made the director of the 
school belonging to the Abbey at Dunstable; by 1180 he was 
a distinguished professor at Paris University; returned to 
Dunstable about 1186, but soon after left the Benedictines of 
St. Albans, and joined the Augustines of Cirencester ; was there 
elected Abbot in 1213, and died in 1217. Necham’s “ De 
laudibus divinae Sapientiae,” a poem in ten parts, devotes many 
lines to the praise of various flowers and fruits. The seventh 
book is on the excellence of such herbs as betony, centaury, 
plantain, and wormwood ; the eighth is about fruits—cherries, 
peaches, medlars, and so forth. He does not, however, confine 
his praises to English productions, but sings of terebinth, 
cinnamon, and spices, and fruits which he had probably never 
seen in their natural state. In like manner, his description in 
his other work, De Naturis Rerum, of what a “ noble garden ” 
should be, is drawn from imagination, as many plants, quite 
unfit for culture in the open air in this country, or even in 
Europe, are included in the list of what the garden should con¬ 
tain. This is easily accounted for, as Necham, like others of 
his time, borrowed freely from classical writers. “ The 
garden/’ 2 he writes, “ should be adorned with roses and lilies, 
turnsole, violets, and mandrake ; there you should have parsley 
and cost, and fennel, and southernwood, and coriander, sage, 
savory, hyssop, mint, rue, dittany, smallage, pellitory, lettuce, 
garden cress, peonies. There should also be planted beds with 
onions, leeks, garlick, pumpkins, and shalots ; cucumber, poppy, 
daffodil, and acanthus ought to be in a good garden. There 
should also be pottage herbs, such as beets, herb mercury, 
orach, sorrel, and mallows.” So far, this is evidently a 
simple catalogue of what was to be seen in his garden at 
Cirencester, or any other fair-sized garden of his day. But 
1 Several MSS. exist; see Dr. Cunningham’s Introduction to Walter de 
Henley’s Husbandry, Royal Historical Society, 1890. 
2 The translation of the names of plants is taken from Wright’s 
edition of Necham’s works. 
