no 
SHAKESPEARE’S GARDEN 
together with a little salt and eaten fasting. This 
doth defend a man from poison and from Pestilence 
all day” (Bullein, “Government of Health/’ 1558). 
It is no longer that we prize the tree as an antidote, 
but from its fruit excellent pickle is made, and in 
winter the nuts form a useful addition to dessert. 
Twice only does the poet refer to the walnut—first 
as a mere trifle, “a walnut shell” ( Taming of the 
Shrew , IV. iii. 170), and, again : 
As jealous as Ford, that searched a hollow walnut. 
Merry Wives of Windsor , IV. ii. 170. 
The grape (the fruit of Vitis vinifera , L.) grows in 
profusion in our English gardens, and has done so 
since the days of Roman supremacy, though it rarely 
ripens. To obtain satisfactory fruit we must seek it 
in our greenhouses. And yet at one time it must 
have been very widely cultivated, and in the open, 
too, for wine. Domesday Book mentions some thirty- 
eight vineyards, and one in Essex yielded 20 hogs¬ 
heads of wine in a year. Roman vineyard sites are 
found in many places. There is one at Weston-sub- 
Edge in Gloucestershire still so called, in which 
numbers of coins, etc., have been found, and of which 
the terraces remain. 
In Shakespeare’s time they were grown, as along 
the Rhine to-day, trained to poles. Gerard says 
in his “ Herbal,” : “ The vine is held up with 
poles and frames of wood, and by that means it 
spreadeth all about and climbeth aloft; it joyneth 
itself unto briers, or whatsoever standeth next to it.” 
There are many place-names in England derived 
from the vine and marking the site of former vine¬ 
yards. Among the most famous are those at Hat¬ 
field and Warwick, the former a terraced garden 
glowing with peacocks in a semi-wild state, the 
latter a royal garden, once of some celebrity, and of 
