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"THE CURIOUS KNOTTED GARDEN"

I
Flower Lovers and Herbalists

Table of Contents

THE Elizabethan flower garden as an independent garden came into existence about 1595. It was largely the creation of John Parkinson (1567-1650), who seems to have been the first person to insist that flowers were worthy of cultivation for their beauty quite apart from their value as medicinal herbs. Parkinson was also the first to make of equal importance the four enclosures of the period: (1) the garden of pleasant flowers; (2) the kitchen garden (herbs and roots); (3) the simples (medicinal); and (4) the orchard.

One would hardly expect to find such esthetic appreciation of flowers from Parkinson, because he was an apothecary, with a professional attitude toward plants; and our ideas of an Elizabethan apothecary picture a dusty seller of narcotics and "drams of poison," like the old man to whom Romeo and Juliet repaired.

John Parkinson was of a different type. Our portrait illustration depicts him, wearing a stylish Genoa velvet doublet with lace ruff and cuffs, a man who could apparently hold his own in any company of courtiers and men of fashion. Parkinson knew a great many distinguished persons and entertained visitors at his nurseries, where he must have held them spellbound (if he talked as well as he wrote) while he explained the beauties of a new yellow gilliflower, the latest new scarlet martagon lily, or the flower that he so proudly holds in his hand—"the orange-color Nonesuch."

Parkinson's talents were recognized at court, for he was appointed "Apothecary to James I." He had a garden of his own at Long Acre, which he cultivated with enthusiasm, raising new varieties of well-known flowers and tending with care new specimens of foreign importations and exotics—"outlandish flowers" they were called in Shakespeare's day—and, finally, writing about his floral pets with great knowledge, keen observation, poetic insight, and quaint charm. His great book, "Paradisi in Sole; Paradisus Terrestris," appeared in London in 1629, the most original book of botany of the period and the most complete English treatise until Ray came.

JOHN GERARD

PARKINSON AND LOBEL

Although published thirteen years after Shakespeare's death, Parkinson's book describes exactly the style of gardens and the variety of flowers that were familiar to Shakespeare; and to this book we may go with confidence to learn more intimately the aspect of what we may call the Shakespeare garden. In it we learn to our surprise that horticulture in the late Tudor and early Stuart days was not in the simple state that it is generally supposed to have been in. There were flower fanciers in and near London—and indeed throughout England—and there were expert gardeners and florists.

Parkinson was very friendly with the other London flower growers of whom he speaks cordially in his book and with never the least shadow of jealousy. He frequently mentions visiting the gardens of Gerard, Nicholas Leate, and Ralph Tuggy (or Tuggie).

Everybody has heard of Gerard's "Herbal or General Historie of Plants," published in 1597, for it is one of the most famous ancient books on flowers. A contemporary botanist said that "Gerard exceeded most, if not all of his time, in his care, industry and skill in raising, increasing, and preserving plants." For twenty years Gerard was superintendent of Lord Burleigh's famous gardens—one of which was in the Strand, London, and the other at Theobald's in Hertfordshire. Gerard also had a garden of his own at Holborn (then a suburb of London), where he raised many rare specimens and tried many experiments. He employed a collector, William Marshall, to travel in the Levant for new plants. Gerard (1545-1607) was a physician, as well as a practical gardener; but, although he possessed great knowledge, he does not appear to have had the esthetic appreciation of flowers that Parkinson had in such great measure. His name is also written Gerade. Gerard's "Herbal" was not the first. Horticulturists could consult the "Grete Herbal," first printed by Peter Treveris in 1516; Fitzherbert, "Husbandry" (1523); Walter Cary, "Herbal" (1525); a translation of Macer's "Herbal" (1530); the "Herbal" by Dodoens, published in Antwerp in 1544; William Turner's "The Names of Herbs in Greke, Latin, Englishe, Duche and Frenche," etc. (1548), reprinted by the English Dialect Society (1881); Thomas Tusser's "Five Pointes of Good Husbandry," etc. (1573), reprinted by the English Dialect Society (1878); Didymus Mountain's (Thomas Hill) "A Most Brief and Pleasant Treatise Teaching How to Sow and Set a Garden" (1563), "The Proffitable Art of Gardening" (1568), and "The Gardener's Labyrinth" (1577); Barnaby Googe's "Four Books of Husbandry," collected by M. Conradus Heresbachius, "Newly Englished and increased by Barnaby Googe" (1577); William Lawson's "A New Orchard and Garden" (1618); Francis Bacon's "Essay on Gardening" (1625); and John Parkinson's "Paradisi in Sole, Paradisus Terrestris" (1629).

Ralph Tuggie, or Tuggy, so often spoken of by Parkinson, had a fine show garden at Westminster, Where he specialized in carnations and gilliflowers. After his death his widow, "Mistress Tuggie," kept it up.

Another flower enthusiast was the Earl of Salisbury, who placed his splendid garden at Hatfield under the care of John Tradescant, the first of a noted family of horticulturists. John Tradescant also had a garden of his own in South Lambeth, "the finest in England" every one called it. Here Tradescant introduced the acacia; the lilac, called in those days the "Blue Pipe Flower"; and, if we may believe Parkinson, the pomegranate. Among other novelties that attracted visitors to this show garden he had the "Sable Flag," known also as the "Marvel of Peru."

Lord Zouche was another horticulturist of note. His fine garden at Hackney contained plants that he himself collected on his travels in Austria, Italy, and Spain. Lord Zouche gave his garden into the keeping of the distinguished Mathias de Lobel, a famous physician and botanist of Antwerp and Delft. Lobel was made botanist to James I and had a great influence upon flower culture in England. For him the Lobelia was named—an early instance of naming plants for a person and breaking away from the quaint descriptive names for flowers.

Elizabethan gardens owed much to Nicholas Leate, or Lete, a London merchant who about 1590 became a member of the Levant Company. As a leading merchant in the trade with Turkey and discharging in connection with commercial enterprise the duties of a semi-political character, Leate became wealthy and was thus able to indulge his taste for flowers and anything else he pleased. He had a superb garden and employed collectors to hunt for specimens in Turkey and Syria. His "servant at Aleppo" sent many new flowers to London, such as tulips, certain kinds of lilies,—the martagon, or Turk's Cap, for instance,—irises, the Crown-Imperial, and many new anemones, or windflowers. The latter became the rage, foreshadowing the tulip-mania of later years. Nicholas Leate also imported the yellow Sops-in-Wine, a famous carnation from Poland, which had never been heard of before in England, and the beautiful double yellow rose from Constantinople. Leate was a member of the Worshipful Company of Ironmongers, London, and Master of it in 1616, 1626, and 1627, and his portrait, given here, said to be by Daniel Mytens, hung in Ironmongers' Hall in London until this famous building was destroyed by a German bomb in 1917. Leate died in 1630.

NICHOLAS LEATE

Leate, being a most enthusiastic flower fancier and garden lover, not only imported rare specimens but tried many experiments. Indeed we are surprised in going through old garden manuals of Shakespearean days to see how many and how varied were the attempts to produce "sports" and novelties. We read of grafting a rosebush and placing musk in the cleft in an effort to produce musk-roses; recipes for changing the color of flowers; methods for producing double flowers; and instructions for grafting and pruning plants, sowing seeds, and plucking flowers during the increase, or waning, of the moon.

These professional florists and gentlemen amateurs valued their rare specimens from foreign countries as they valued their emeralds from Peru, Oriental pearls from Ceylon and rubies from India. Parkinson says very earnestly:

"Our English gardeners are all, or most of them, ignorant in the ordering of their outlandish[5] flowers, as not being trained to know them. And I do wish all gentlemen and gentlewomen whom it may concern for their own good, to be as careful whom they trust with the planting and replanting of their fine flowers as they would be with so many jewels; for the roots of many of them, being small and of great value, may soon be conveyed away and a clean, fair tale told that such a root is rotten, or perished in the ground, if none be seen where it should be; or else that the flower hath changed in color when it had been taken away, or a counterfeit one had been put in the place thereof; and thus many have been deceived of their daintiest flowers, without remedy or knowledge of the defect."

[5] Exotic.

The influence of the Italian Renaissance upon the Elizabethan garden has already been shown (see page 15), but the importance of this may be appropriately recalled here in the following extract from Bloom:

"The Wars of the Roses gave little time for gardening; and when matters were settled and the educational movements which marked the dawn of the Renaissance began, the gardens once again, after a break of more than a thousand years, went back to classical models, as interpreted by the Italian school of the time. Thus the gardens of the Palace of Nonesuch (1529) and Theobald's (1560) showed all the new ideas: flower-beds edged with low trellises, topiary work of cut box and yew, whereby the natural growth of the trees was trained into figures of birds and animals and especially of peacocks; while here and there mounts were thrown up against the orchard or garden wall, ascended by flights of steps and crowned with arbors, while sometimes the view obtained in this manner was deemed insufficient and trellised galleries extended the whole length of the garden. In 1573 the gardens of Kenilworth, which Shakespeare almost certainly visited, had a terrace walk twelve feet in width and raised ten feet above the garden, terminating at either end in arbors redolent with sweetbrier and flowers. Beneath these again was a garden of an acre or more in size divided into four quarters by sanded walks and having in the center of each plot an obelisk of red porphyry with a ball at the top. These were planted with apple, pear and cherry while in the center was a fountain of white marble."