I The Stately Garden

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BEFORE taking any steps to make a Shakespeare garden, it is essential to study the architectural lines of the house and the conformation of the grounds on which it is purposed to lay out the garden, or series of gardens. If the grounds are undulating, or hilly, naturally the gardens must be arrayed on different levels. The gardens can rise above the house in terraces if the house stands on the side of a hill, or beneath it; or the gardens may sink below the house, if the building crowns the summit of an elevation. On the other hand, if the house is erected on a flat plain, the gardens can open out like a series of rooms partitioned off by hedges, arbors, or walls. An artistic eye and resourceful mind will prefer to take advantage of the natural lines and work out a plan suggested by them. With nearly every kind of house the square garden accords, either perfectly square or longer than broad. Frequently the small enclosed garden looks well at the side of the house. It is essential to call in the professional gardener for advice regarding the situation of the garden, and questions of drainage, sunshine, and exposure to winds and sunshine; for all these matters aid in determining the arrangement. If a series of gardens is planned, one leading from another, it is well to consider them as outside rooms. In this case there will be little trouble in making the lay-out. The simplest plan is always the most effective. A very good example to follow is the lay-out of Montacute, Somersetshire, built in 1580-1601:

"Before the house is a walled-in forecourt, and in the forecourt a small lawn with a fountain, or pool, in the center. An entrance-gate leads into the forecourt. Before this forecourt comes a small antecourt, designed for the sake of dignity. On one side of the forecourt is the base, or bass, court, surrounded by the stables, kitchens, and other buildings; and on the other side is the ornamental pleasure-grounds, including 'my lady's garden,' a survival of the small enclosed castle garden, of the Middle Ages.

GARDEN HOUSE IN OLD ENGLISH GARDEN

"Overlooking the garden is the Terrace—twenty or thirty feet wide—of considerable length, and protected by a balustrade of detached banisters, of handsome design pierced in stone. From the Terrace wide flights of steps at either end lead to the broad sanded walks that divide the parterre into several subdivisions, which are again divided by narrow paths into smaller designs.

"The general shape is square, following the antique classical garden of Pliny's time, enclosed with trellis-work, espaliers, clipped box-hedges, statuary, fountains, vases, and pleached alleys."

The famous Nonsuch, near Ewell, in Surrey, laid out by Henry VIII toward the end of his life, retained its appearance for more than a hundred years; for at the time of the Parliamentary Survey (1650) it was thus described:

"It was cut out and divided into several allies, quarters and rounds, set about with thorn hedges; on the north side is a kitchen garden, very commodious and surrounded with a brick wall of fourteen feet high. On the west is a wilderness severed from the little park by a lodge, the whole containing ten acres. In the privy garden were pyramids, fountains and basins of marble, one of which is set round with six lilack trees, which trees bear no fruit, but a very pleasant flower. Before the Palace is a neat and handsome bowling-green surrounded with a balustrade of freestone."

Hampton Court Gardens, so beautiful to-day, were very famous in Tudor times. The old manor house was at the southwest corner of the area, and around it Cardinal Wolsey laid out his gardens and orchards. In 1599 Henry VIII seized the estate and enlarged the gardens. Ernest Law exclaims:

"What a truly delightful picture must these gardens have formed with their little walks and parterres, sheltered arbors and banquetting-houses. The largest plot was called the King's New Garden and occupied the place called the Privy Garden. Here were the gay parterres with gravel paths and little raised mounds with sun-dials on them. Here was also the Pond Garden, which is still to be seen and which, though much altered, yet retains something of its Tudor aspect; and another, known as the Little Garden, which may, perhaps, be identified with the enclosed space at the side of the Pond Garden. Studded about in various parts of the gardens and orchards were heraldic beasts on pedestals, holding vanes, or shields, bearing the King's Arms and badges; also many brass sun-dials."

Another typical garden was that of Kenilworth, known, of course, to Shakespeare, as it is in Warwickshire:

"His Honor's the Earl of Leicester's exquisite appointment of a beautiful garden, an acre or more in quantity, that lieth on the north. Whereon all along the Castle wall is reared a pleasant terrace, ten feet high and twelve feet broad, even under foot and fresh of fine grass, as is also the side, thereof, towards the garden, in which, by sundry equal distances with obelisks and spheres and white bears all of stone upon their curious bases by goodly shew, were set. To these, two fine arbors, redolent by sweet trees and flowers, at each end, one; the garden-plot under that, with fair alleys, green by grass, even voided from the borders on both sides, and some (for change) with sand, smooth and firm, pleasant to walk on, as a sea-shore when the water is avoided. Then much gracified by due proportion of four even quarters, in the midst of each upon a base of two feet square and high, seemingly bordered of itself, a square pilaster rising pyramidically fifteen feet high."

Thus Robert Laneham wrote in a letter describing the pageant at Kenilworth in 1575.

The garden of varying ascents and descents was much admired in Elizabethan days. Sir Henry Wotton (1568-1630), a most sensitive critic, who wrote so beautifully of flowers, describes in his "Elements of Architecture" a garden laid out on different levels:

"I have seen a garden for the manner perchance incomparable into which the first access was a high walk like a terrace, from whence might be taken a general view of the whole Plot below. From this, the Beholder, descending many steps, was afterwards conveyed again by several mountings and fallings to various entertainments of his scent and sight. Every one of these diversities was as if he had been magically transported into a new garden."

The above extracts will afford suggestions for the lay-out of fine stately gardens. The most typical Elizabethan estates are Montacute, Somersetshire; Longleat, Wiltshire; Hatfield, Hardwicke, Kirby, Penshurst, Kent; and Drayton House, Northamptonshire. All of these are models for imitation in our own country.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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