79. A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM GARDEN

Is there any theme more romantic than a flower garden based on Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream? One of the most popular plays by the great English playwright, it references 24 plants and flowers. For flower gardeners who love literary allusion, there can be nothing sweeter than King Oberon’s description of the rustic retreat of his fairy queen, Titania:

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,

Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,

Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine.

Perhaps you might like to re-create a fairy queen’s garden abode, abloom with the specific flowers mentioned: thyme, violets, oxlips, and the “luscious woodbine.” This sweet spot is where you may encounter Puck from the fairy realm, and so you will need a place to sit and be lulled, as he said, “in these flowers with dances and delight.” If you follow a gardening practice of Shakespeare’s time, you may choose to build a low, wide stone seat on which to rest. The area at its base can be planted with creeping thyme (Thymus serpyllum). Its foliage releases an aromatic, pungent scent when sat upon or walked on.

Then add Titania’s “nodding violets” to the scene. Plant the common blue violet (Viola sororia), a native spring-blooming perennial only 4 to 6 inches high. Please note that it freely self-seeds and spreads easily. A lawn tufted with clumps of violets in May fits well in a wild fairy queen’s bower, but you may not want it to spread elsewhere.

Oxlip (Primula elatior) is also mentioned by King Oberon, but since it is a rare European native species why not use a relative? I suggest the spring-flowering polyantha primrose (Primula × polyantha). And Titania’s hideaway was “over-canopied” with woodbine. That is the common name for European honeysuckle (Lonicera periclymenum), which is a deciduous twining climber that grows 10 to 20 feet tall. You can train this fragrant flowering vine up a trellis near the stone seat to create a partial green enclosure. The tubular, two-lipped flowers appear from early to late summer and are highly scented at night. A midsummer night’s dream, indeed.