Medieval gardens in Europe were widespread, but our very incomplete knowledge of them is better for those of elites than the common people, who probably mostly grew for food and medicine. The range of ornamental plants available was far narrower than in later periods. The term ‘garden’ refers to the ‘garth’, or enclosure, required around areas valued for their contents or their privacy. Every early garden manual starts with advice on how to form its defence, either by water, hedge or wall; elites wanted to have walled gardens. The skills required by gardeners, who tended to be better paid than other manual workers, included those of vineyard attendants, fruiterers, herb gardeners or makers of arbours.Landsberg, 86-89
The cultures which settled in the Roman Empire north of the Alps in the Age of Migrations appear to have had little tradition of gardening, but there was probably some continuity with sophisticated Roman gardening south of the Alps and in Romanized populations, such as the Gallo-Roman areas in southern France. In this context monastic gardens were important, especially in the Early Middle Ages,Uglow, 16-24 but are not covered here.
The gardens of the Middle Ages treated below also exclude the Islamic garden traditions of the Umayyad Caliphate, which by 714 had conquered all of the Iberian Peninsula except the northern coast, and the ensuing Caliphate of Cordoba. Cordoba itself was prominent in the Islamic Golden Age, and Christian Europe owed much in science, medicine and botany to exchanges in times of peace. Muslim rule in Spain was not fully extinguished until 1492.Hobhouse, 41-50; 57-61; Jellicoes, 363 Sicily too fell under Arab control until the Norman County of Sicily was established in 1071.
The Christian world included most of the territory of Europe, with its many languages and cultures, and yet the authority of the Pope, the multinational organisation of the religious houses and the dynastic links between the many ruling houses bound it together, despite the frequent squabbles, so that the culture of gardens was a largely shared tradition over the period. There have been numerous attempts over the last century to recreate them,Landsberg, Chapter 5 but "no medieval garden survives in anything remotely like original form".Leslie, 137 Naturally the climatic differences between northern parts of Europe and Mediterranean areas dictated many differences,Jellicoes, 365-366 but from the 10th century until about 1300 at least, Europe enjoyed the Medieval Warm Period, which helped with some tender plants in northern areas.Hobhouse, 75-76
Forms of evidence Knowledge of medieval gardens is hampered by the rarity of physical and archaeological remains,Creighton 2009, 45.Hobhouse, 70 although there are archaeological studies about them;For example about medieval gardens in Sweden: also by the paucity of reliable visual evidence. That which exists is principally from miniatures in illuminated manuscripts, few earlier than the fifteenth century.Leslie, 137-140; Landsberg, 7 Most were intended to illustrate the section for the calendar of saints in luxury psalters and books of hours, which often gave a page to each month, illustrated opposite with miniatures showing the Labours of the Months, mostly the farming activities which dominated the medieval economy, but sometimes also gardening.Landsberg, 94-96; Leslie, 165-166 These were fanciful in nature, though sometimes with incidental realism. The quantity and level of detail shown in gardening-related miniatures, especially from Flanders, increased sharply from about 1475 until the tradition finally expired around the 1530s. This is beyond the usual definition of the Middle Ages,Leslie, 6-9 but new Renaissance ideas and plants had barely reached the northern centres of illumination by then.Quest-Ritson, 15-16, quoting Roy Strong
Images of the Virgin Mary in her hortus conclusus ("enclosed garden") and the "garden of love", a popular subject in 15th-century engravings by Master E. S. (d. c. 1468) and others, are explicitly set in gardens.Leslie, 140-144 The Annunciation increasingly comes to be set in or beside a garden, often with Mary in a loggia and the Archangel Gabriel in the garden outside.Leslie, 163-164 Other biblical subjects often given a garden setting are Susanna and the Elders,Hall, 294 and Bathsheba in her bath.Hall, 93
The monastic and palatial records of European early medieval gardens suggest that they were mainly intended for growing culinary or medicinal herbs. The concept of the garden of pleasure barely existed until the High Middle Ages, and when it did, they were intended to provide rest and pleasure to the senses. By the early Renaissance period, the emphasis switched from relaxation to display.Colvin 1986, 12-3. Sophisticated garden-making was already underway in the Italian Renaissance garden and the Gardens of the French Renaissance especially at the transition from the Late Middle Ages to the Renaissance. In England, the new Tudor dynasty after 1485 brought a style influenced by Burgundy and France, but that soon developed distinctive elements in its knot gardens and carved heraldic beasts on poles. Until about 1540 this style was restricted to royal gardens and those of a small court circle.Uglow, 54-56; Quest-Ritson, 14-18
Meanwhile, lower down the social scale, English county quarter sessions would record a purchase of freehold land from the twelfth century via a fine of lands, and gardens were listed alongside messuages, and arable and woodland acreage, confirming that gardens were not just for high-status establishments but were increasingly normal accompaniments to those of rector, squire and farmer, contributing to the medieval diet.For example, see Staffordshire Historical Collections, vols III, IV, XI, XII, etc. One study suggests that almost every cottage would have had a garden, however small, but most garden produce was for consumption rather than sale, which is why gardens appear infrequently in account books.Dyer, Christopher (1987) ‘Gardens and Orchards in England in the Middle Ages’, in Flaran 9: Jardins et Vergers en Europe occidentale (VIII – XVIII siecles), ed. Charles Higounet, Toulouse: Presses universitaires du Midi.
Some of the more popular medieval poems were also produced in illustrated form, and when printed books commenced they sometimes included printed illustrations. These are no more help in visualising medieval gardens, for similar reasons to the religious images, as the poetry was generally allegorical romance with visions of earthly paradise and promoted the code of chivalric honour, including courtly love.Leslie, 118-119 (Johanna Bauman's chapter)
The most famous and enduring poem with many passages set in gardens is the Roman de la Rose, composed around 1240 in France by Guillaume de Lorris and continued by Jean de Meun a generation later.Leslie, 128-129 (Johanna Bauman's chapter) Another thirteenth-century French poem, the Lai de l'Oiselet, was retold by John Lydgate as The Churle and the Bird. Rather later English poets included John Skelton who composed The Garlande of Laurell about 1495, first printed in 1523,Skelton, J. (1843) The Poetical Works of John Skelton: with notes, edited by A. Dyce, 2 vols, London: Thomas Rodd. and the Groom of the Chamber Stephen Hawes whose The Pastime of Pleasure (completed 1506) includes a description of a garden probably, insofar as it relates to reality, based on that at Richmond Palace.Thacker, 39-41
These images and poetics may be of only limited help in visualising medieval gardens, but the miniatures illustrate their construction and floristic content, while the poems provide English terms for them, bypassing the Latinised versions found in earlier accounts. In the 15th century, images of plants on the borders of illuminated manuscripts became increasingly careful and accurate, culminating in the over-200 plants shown in the very lavish Grandes Heures d'Anne de Bretagne of around 1508, many of which are labelled, and include the first record in Europe of some species, including American ones. One of the last great illuminated manuscripts, this also marks the coming to an end of an era in terms of the restricted choice of plants available to gardeners. According to Penelope Hobhouse, in the century after the 1540s "twenty times as many [new species of] plants entered Europe as in the preceding two thousand".Hobhouse, 98
Castle gardens
Many illuminated manuscripts show gardens of rectangular beds, small enough to be worked from the side paths, in available locations within castle or palace walls and intended for choice plants. They were transient as they were remade annually in spring. Usually they appear raised above the surrounding surface by a few inches. Those plants that were to be reused were grown in flowerpots and taken to a safe place in the autumn. These included trained bay trees, and, from the fifteenth century, the tender gilliflowers (known today as carnations).Keay and Watkins 2013, 156-162. Most medieval castles and palaces had gardens; often small gardens were placed below the bed chambers of the owner.Landsberg, 16 In England we find the gardener at Havering Palace in Essex holding hereditary office in the early twelfth century.Harvey 1981, 10 & 60. A garden at Woodstock Palace was maintained as a manorial obligation, for the service of tending it was attached to land nearby.Victoria County History, Oxfordshire, vol. XII, 435-9.
The surround to a whole enclosed garden might be simple hedge, in which case it would probably consist of pleached quickset (hawthorn) entwined with brambles and dog roses. A more decorative version might have eglantine (sweet briar).Landsberg, 64-66, 125
If the enclosed area contained cultivated beds these would probably have been protected by posts and rails with a latticework infill. The white and red roses would most likely be found entwined in it. The beds grew herbs for the pot and for physick (medicine). They could also be annuals to which no use had yet been ascribed but which were valued for their beauty. Some of the more traditional flowers such as the lily (a bulb) and the peony (a perennial) were, though, better admired in the herber growing through the grass.Uglow, 36-38
Flowers were used for altar and church decoration,Hobhouse, 73 and a number of spring and summer feast days were associated with the flowers likely to be blooming at the time, which might also be worn or decorate doorways. No doubt many, like hawthorn branches, were taken from the wild.Brown, 56-57; Landsberg, 41 The use of strewing herbs as part of the straw and other plant material spread on floors indoors meant smelling herbs such as sage might be grown in large quantities.
The cultivated garden's cycle was the same as in agriculture, the annual herbs being sown in March or April and harvested in the autumn. Over winter the garden would be dug over and manured, and then the garden was re-made every spring.Landsberg, 31 Hence alleys and edges were annual. Pruned and clipped evergreen trees or shrubs, often sweet-bay, and sometimes trained into estrade shapes, could be grown in northern Europe in pots and plunged as the garden was re-made, only to be raised in the autumn and taken indoors away from the cold."Coming In From the Cold" , Met Museum blog, 2011