100 A HISTORY OF GARDENING IN ENGLAND 
there amongst them. . . . Some plant cornel trees and plash 
them or keep them low to form them into a hedge; and some 
again take a low prickly shrub that abideth always green, called 
in Latin Pyracantha.” 1 Of the cypress, Parkinson writes : 
“For the goodly proportion this tree bearethu as also for his 
ever grene head, it is and hath beene of great account with 
all princes, both beyond and on this side of the sea, to plant 
them in rowes on both sides of some spatious walke, which, by 
reason of their highe growing, and little spreading, must be 
planted the thicker together, and so they give a pleasant and 
sweet shadow/’ Gerard, writing of the same plant, says : “ It 
groweth likewise in diuers places in Englande, where it hath 
beene planted, as at Sion, a place neere London, sometime a 
house of nunnes ; it groweth also at Greenwich and at other 
places ; and likewise at Hampstead in the garden of Master 
Waide, one of the Clarkes of hir Maiesties Priuy Counsell.” 
Many of the walks and alleys were “ shadowed over with 
vaulting or arch-hearbes.” 2 Bacon thus explains the object of 
making “ these pleached alleys,” or “ covert ” walks. “ But 
because the alley will be long, and in the great heat of the year 
or day you ought not to buy the shade in the garden by going 
in the sun through the greene (you ought) to plant a covert 
alley upon carpenter’s work, about twelve foot in height, by 
which you may go in shade into the garden.” The " thick- 
pleached alley,” in which Antonio saw Don Pedro and Claudio 
walking, in Much Ado About Nothing , was one of this sort. The 
word “ pleach,” or “ plash,” or “ impleach,” is from the French 
plesser, from plexum, to plait, infold, or interweave. It is 
used by Shakespeare, not only for cut and intwined trees, 
as in this case, but also for braided hair (“ their hair with 
twisted metal amorously impleach’d,” in A Lover s Complaint) 
and for arms enfolded (“ with pleacht armes, bendinge down,” 
in Antony and Cleopatra). 
The plants used to form these shady walks were willows, 
limes, wych-elms, hornbeam, cornel, privet, or whitethorn, also 
“ the great maple or sycamore tree cherished in our land only 
in orchards, or elsewhere, for shade and walks.” ... “ It is 
altogether planted for shady walks, and hath no other use with 
1 Thomas Hill, Gardener's Labyrinth. 2 Ibid. 
