2S9 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, August 7, 1860. 
ENGLISH FLOWER GARDENING IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 
For this interesting illustration of the stylo in which gardens 
were arranged in the fourteenth century, we are indebted to Mr. 
Hudson Turner’s “ Observations on the Horticulture of England 
in Early Times,” and he copied the drawing from a MS. of that 
date in the Bodleian Library, entitled “ Romaunt d’Alexander.” 
It is evident from this drawing that in those feudal days the 
garden and orchard 
were within the em¬ 
battled walls which 
surrounded the baro¬ 
nial residence, and, 
consequently, were of 
very limited extent. 
Those days were not 
days of vegetarian diet; 
venison pasties, chines 
of beef, and pottles of 
ale and wine were alike 
the daily food of ladies 
as well as of the more 
athletic sex. 
Even in the drawing 
before us, representing 
as it does a royal re¬ 
sidence, the flower- 
borders contain little 
more than Clove Gilli- 
flowers. The flower 
garden is separated 
from the way leading 
from the entrance-gate 
to the palace only by 
ordinary paling, and 
by similar paling the 
orchard is separated 
from the road on its 
other side. There are 
no beds of flowers in 
the garden, but there 
is a border beneath the 
paling separated by a 
path from what might 
be a grass plat, and 
on which the royal 
pair are disporting themselves, as Caxton terms it, at “ The game 
and play of the Chesse.” The season must, therefore, have been 
of the summer-tide, and, indeed, the fruit on the orchard trees 
tell the same. In which case, unless the draughtsman is guilty 
of an anachronism, they grafted late ; for the gardener seems em¬ 
ployed in that act of fruitcraft, and must have been more than 
usually adroit if he had no other grafting implement that the bill¬ 
hook in his hand. This leads, perhaps, to the more reconcil¬ 
able conclusion that he was cutting off the head of a stock, the 
scions on which were established. 
Thus meagre is all the information we possess of the mode of 
arranging the flower gardens of the fourteenth century, and we 
have but little more particular details of their contents. We 
will quote Mr. Hudson upon this point. 
“Our invaluable authority, Alexander Nccham, Abbot of 
Cirencester in the thirteenth century, says a ‘noble garden’ 
should be arrayed with Roses, Lilies, Sunflowers, Violets, and 
Poppies ; he mentions also the Narcissus ( N. pseudo-narcissus!). 
The Rose seems to have been cultivated from the most remote 
time; early in the thirteenth century we find King John sending 
a wreath of Roses to his lady, par amours , at Litton; Roses and 
Lilies were among the plants bought for the royal garden at 
Westminster, 1276 ; the annual rendering of a Rose is one of the 
commonest species of quit-rent named in ancient conveyances. 
The extent to which the cultivation of this flower had been carried 
between the fourteenth and the sixteenth century, may be esti¬ 
mated by the varieties enumerated by Lawson (“ A New Orchard 
and Garden,” &c., page 57) ; they are the red, damask, velvet, 
double-double Provence Rose; the sweet Musk Rose, double and 
single, and the double and single white Rose. The Provence 
Rose was probably first imported in the fifteenth century, when 
the occupation of France by the English may be conjectured to 
have caused the introduction of many additional varieties of 
fruits and flowers; the marriage of Margaret of Anjou with 
Henry VI. may be regarded also as an event likely to have 
brought the Provence Rose to our northern climate. Of all the 
flowers, however, known to our ancestors, the Gilliflowcr or Clove 
Pink (Dianthus cargophgllus), ( clou-de-girojlee ,) was the com¬ 
monest, and to a certain degree the most esteemed. Mr. Loudon 
has stated, erroneously, that the cruelties of the Duke of Alva, in 
1567, were the occasion of our receiving through the Flemish 
weavers, Gilliflowers, 
Carnations, and Pro¬ 
vence Roses. The 
Gilliflower had been 
known and prized in 
England centuries be¬ 
fore. At the end of 
the sixteenth century, 
Lawson, who terms it 
the king of flowers, ex¬ 
cept the Rose, boasted 
that he had Gilli¬ 
flowers ‘ of nine or ten 
severall colours, and 
divers of them as 
bigge as Roses. Of all 
flowers (save the Da- 
maske Rose) they aro 
the most pleasant to 
sight and smell. Their 
use is much in orna¬ 
ment, and comforting 
to the spirites, by the 
senco of smelling.’ 
There was a variety 
of this flower well 
knownin early times as 
the wall Gilliflower or 
Bee-flower, ‘ because 
growhig in walles, even 
in winter, and good for 
bees ’ (‘ The Country 
Housewife’s Garden,’ 
page 14). The reserved 
rent, 1 unius clavi ga- 
riofili ,’ whichisof such 
frequent occurrence in 
medieval deeds relat¬ 
ing to land, meant simply the render of a Gilliflower, although 
it has been usually understood to signify the payment of a 
Clove of commerce. The incorrectness of this reading must be 
apparent, if it be recollected that the Clove was scarcely known 
in Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when this 
kind of reserved rent was most common. 
“ Another flower of common growth in medieval orchards, or 
gardens, was the Pervinke, or Periwinkle— 
‘ There sprang- the Yiclet all newt, 
Anil fresh Pervinke, rich of hewe, 
And flowris yellow, white, and rede; 
Such plente grew there nor in the mede.’— Chaucer. 
“As this plant will flower under the shade of trees or lofty 
walls, it was well adapted to ornament the securely enclosed, and 
possibly sombre, gardens of early times. 
“ From an early period the nurture of bees had occupied 
attention in England; the numerous entries in Domesday in 
which honey is mentioned show how much that product was 
employed for domestic purposes in the eleventh century. Among 
other uses to which it was applied was the making of beer or ale 
(cervisia ). When the Duke of Saxony visited England in the 
reign of Henry II., the sheriff of Hampshire had an allowance in 
his account for corn, barley, and honey which he had purchased 
to brew beer for the duke’s use (Madox’s History of the Ex¬ 
chequer). An apiary was generally attached to a medieval 
garden, and formed part of the stock which, according to the 
usage of early days, was sometimes let out to farm. In the 
fourteenth century an English writer, whom I have before 
quoted, observed that every hive of bees ought to yield, one with 
another, two of issue, as some yielded none and others three or 
four yearly. In some places, he adds, bees have no food given to 
them during winter, but where they are fed a gallon of honey 
may suffice to feed eight hives yearly. He estimated that if the 
honey were taken only once in two years each hive would yield 
two gallons. It is in accordance with this ancient practice of 
