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Early
Herb Gardens
The first Christian monastery was founded by St. Anthony in El
Faiyum, northern Egypt, in 350 AD. Right from the start, monasteries
strove to be self-sufficient. St. Anthony made a small garden
with a water supply, and cultivation became so firmly established
that when St. Benedict founded the Benedictine order, gardening
was second only to prayer. A plan drawn up around 816 at St. Gall,
a Swiss monastery, shows four gardens. They are rectangular, and
each has a particular purpose. One, the herbularius or physic
garden next to the infirmary, has sixteen separate beds, each
for a different plant: lilies, roses, climbing beans, costmary,
fenugreek, rosemary, mint,
sage, rue, iris, pennyroyal, watercress,
lovage, and fennel. The second, hortus or vegetable garden, has
eighteen beds, each for a different plant. The third contains
thirteen fruit trees and the graves of deceased monks. The last
one, a kitchen garden, is a walled rectangular plot adjoining
the gardener's house. It has raised beds, but these, unlike the
Roman beds, are enclosed in planks for the first time. Herbs are
featured in this garden as in the medicinal: coriander,
dill, two kinds of poppies, parsley,
chervil, and savory. It isn't surprising to find so many herbs
in these gardens, as they were needed for dyeing clothes and illuminating
manuscripts, for repelling moths from cloth and fleas and lice
from people, for preventing and curing disease, for freshening
the air by strewing herbs in rooms and hospitals, and for disguising
spoiled food.
Another
early document showing the importance of herbs and gardening is
a Latin poem referred to as Hortulus or "little garden"
written by Walafrid Strabo (808 to 49) and dedicated to Grimald,
the Abbot of St. Gall, Strabo's teacher. The first 75 lines contain
horticultural information:
| He
digs up the tangled roots of nettles, a weed. He encloses
his raised bed with planks to prevent the soil from washing
away. He plants from seed and cuttings and waters them drop
by drop "with my own hands letting the water run through my
fingers" so as not to disturb the seed by the rush of the
water. He grows sage, rue, southernwood, gourd, melon, wormwood,
horehound, fennel, iris, lovage, chervil, lily, opium poppy,
tansy, catmint, and roses. |
With
the Renaissance, we see gardens on the scale of public parks,
not places for growing food and medicine. Yet herb gardening was
not altogether forgotten. It grew in popularity, often as a result
of the need for medicine. By the 13th century, most large houses
grew a variety of herbs for household use along with vegetables,
fruit trees, and flowers. In the 16th century, herb gardens, called
physic gardens, were planted by universities for teaching botany
and medicine. As new species were brought back by colonial explorers
and botanical knowledge expanded, the physic garden contained
a far wider range of plants. These were the precursors of the
botanical gardens of today.
Formal
Gardens
 The
formal garden, associated with the French, begins to distinguish
itself from the gardens of Italy by the year 1600. The Mollet
family is at the very heart of the development of the formal garden.
In 1651, André Mollet published Jardin de Plaisir, which
codified the concept of the formal garden. The text and designs
include the following paragraph-a summary of the arrangement and
ingredients of a French formal garden:
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To
the rear of the house [i.e. facing the garden front], the
parterres de broideries (the parterre was
the part of the garden that was seen from the center and
commanding position in the house where the master received
and could dazzle his guests with his possessions and his
gardens; broderie literally means embroidered like
brocade and refers to the varied patterns of boxwood) must
be set out, so that they can be seen and enjoyed from the
windows, without any obstacle in the form of trees, fences,
or other high objects which might interrupt the view.
Beyond
the said parterre de broderie will be set
the parterres or compartments of turf, as well as the bosquets
(groves, arbors), walks, and various fences in their proper
places; so contrived that most of the walks are always terminated
by some statue or fountain; and at the end of these walks
you should erect fine scenes, painted on canvas, so that
you may take them indoors in bad weather. To complete this
design, statues should be erected on pedestals, and grottoes
built in the most appropriate places. According to the quality
of the site, the walks should be raised on terraces and
one should not neglect aviaries, fountains, water-works,
canals, and other such ornaments. When these have been properly
established in the right places, you have made the perfect
pleasure garden.
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Another
garden designer of this period who cannot be overlooked is André
Le Nôtre. It is he who designed the Tuileries Gardens in Paris,
and his greatest garden still survives at Vaux-le-Vicomte, which
became the inspiration for Versailles. These formal French gardens
are more magnificent parks than gardens. Versailles was described
by the Englishman Martin Lister as "a country laid out into alleys
and walks, groves of trees, canals, fountains and everywhere adorned
with ancient and modern statues and urns." It is indeed vast.
It influenced garden design throughout Europe. One can trace the
influence in England, Sweden, Russia, Germany, Austria, Spain,
Italy, and even in the US in cities like Williamsburg and in estates
like Middleton Place in Charleston.
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