THE ELIZABETHAN FLOWER GARDEN 
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the Elizabethan era. What is meant now by a " formal ” or 
** old-fashioned ” garden is one of this type ; but, as genuine 
and unaltered Elizabethan gardens are rare, it is generally the 
further development of the same style a hundred years later, 
which is known as a “ formal old English garden.” 
The garden of this period was laid out strictly in connection 
with the house. The architect who designed the house designed 
the garden also. There are some drawings extant by John 
Thorpe, one of the most celebrated architects of the time, of 
both houses and the gardens attached to them. The garden 
was held to be no mere adjunct to a house, or a confusion of 
greenswards, paths, and flower-beds, but the designing of a 
garden was supposed to require even more skill than the 
planning of a house ; “ men come to build stately sooner than 
to garden finely as if gardening were the greater perfection .” 1 
Sir Hugh Platt’s opinion 2 seems to have been the exception 
that proves the rule, as most other writers were particular in 
describing the correct form for a garden, but he writes : “ I 
shall not trouble the reader with any curious rules for shaping 
and fashioning of a garden or orchard—how long, broad, or 
high, the Beds, Hedges, or Borders should be contrived. . . . 
Every Drawer or Embroiderer—nay (almost) each Dancing 
Master, may pretend to such niceties ; in regard they call for 
very small invention, and lesse learning.” 
In front of the house there was usually a terrace, from 
which the plan of the garden could be surveyed. Flights of 
steps and broad straight walks, called “ forthrights ,” 3 con¬ 
nected the parts of the garden, as well as the garden with the 
house. Smaller walks ran parallel with the terrace, and the 
spaces between were filled with grass plots, mazes, or knotted 
beds. The “ forthrights ” corresponded to the plan of the 
building, while the patterns in the beds and mazes harmonized 
with the details of the architecture. The peculiar geometric 
tracery which surmounted so many Elizabethan houses found 
1 Bacon, Essay on Gardens. 
2 Floraes Paradise , or Garden of Eden, ist ed., 1608. 
3 “ . . . Here’s a maze trod indeed. 
Through forthrights and meanders ...” 
Tempest, Act III., Scene 8. 
