KITCHEN GARDENING UNDER JAMES I. 
143 
and tells how to water them, and give them air and light. 
Window boxes, too, were used : ‘ In every window you may 
make square frames either of lead or of boards well pitched 
within ; fill them with some rich earth, and plant such flowers 
or hearbs therein as you like best.” For the more shady 
parts of a room he advises rosemary, sweet-briar, bay, or ger¬ 
mander. And “ in summer-time,” he continues, “ your 
chimney may be trimed with a fine bank of mosse, ... or with 
orpin, or the white flower called ‘ everlasting/ And at either 
end one of your flower or Rosemary pots. ... You may also 
hang in the roof and about the sides of the room small pompions 
or cowcumbers pricked full of barley. ... You may also 
plant vines without the walls, which being let in at some 
quarrels, may run about the sides of your windows, and all 
over the sealing of your rooms. So may you do with Apricot 
trees, or other plum trees, spreading them against the sides of 
your windows.” 
This great delight in growing flowers for domestic decora¬ 
tion was a marked feature in English life at this period. A 
Dutch traveller, Levimus Leminius, a physician and a native 
of Zierikzee, visited England in 1560. He was charmed with 
English comfort, and thus writes A “ Their chambers and 
parlours strawed over with sweete herbes refreshed mee ;— 
their nosegays finely intermingled with sundry sorts of frag- 
graunte floures, in their bed chambers and privi rooms with 
comfortable smell cheered me up and entirely delyghted all 
my senses.” 
1 Translation by Thomas Newton, published in The Touchstone of 
Complexions, 1581, reprinted in England as Seen by Foreigners, Brench- 
ley Rye. 
