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. 
T HE 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 
94 
