The very concept of creating a scented garden is rooted in ancient history. From the earliest times, the culinary and medicinal properties of herbs and aromatic plants have made them a vital part of human existence. From material necessity to aesthetic pleasure is a short step and historical records suggest that the first scented gardens were planted within the enclosed courtyards of Persian palaces over 2,500 years ago.
These gardens were made not only to delight the senses but also to provide a spiritual sanctuary, quite apart from any practical benefits they conferred. Since the Koran taught that it was mankind's duty to conserve and revere nature as part of the divine creation, these sacred gardens were looked upon as a means of recreating and experiencing heaven on earth.
The term ‘paradise’ derives from the Greek word paradeisos, which in turn was based on the Persian, pairidaeza, literally ‘surrounded by walls’. This referred to an enclosed garden of pleasure, an earthly paradise where both secular and sacred elements were intertwined. The classical Persian garden was constructed to a formal plan within a square or rectangle, having a fountain in the centre from which four streams issued – one in each direction. The whole area was then carefully planted with fruit-bearing and fragrant trees, aromatic herbs and flowers, for the Persians required three main qualities in their paradise gardens: running water, shade and scent.
Canals and fountains in the garden of Qavam House, Iran, built 1879–1886.
An orange tree growing in the Bahia Palace in Marrakesh, Morocco.
Within the Islamic tradition, water was naturally considered to be a very precious element within the garden, since the surrounding area was frequently dominated by desert or wilderness. Shade, of course, was also essential as a place of refuge from the burning heat of the sun. The patterns of light and shadow created by decorative screens and doorways, which were frequently used to create different ‘rooms’ within the overall layout, also played an intrinsic part in the construction of these traditional designs. Scent within the garden may seem by comparison to be less ‘essential’ than the absolute necessity for water and shade. Yet for much of the ancient world, including Persia, perfume was held in such high esteem that it was virtually seen as being as vital to life as food or water! In the words of the prophet Mohammed:
Three things of the world which I love the most are women, perfume and prayer.
In the Islamic esoteric text The Jasmine of the Fedeli d’Amore, Ruzbehan describes the celestial world as being suffused with a wondrous scent which was associated with the presence of the divinity. The evocative power of perfume was also understood as the silent language of passion and human emotion and was valued as a sacred tool of transformation. Scented plants, therefore, endowed the early Persian paradise garden with a very special quality by providing a direct ‘bridge’ from the mundane to the heavenly and elevated it from being simply an earthly domain into a pairidaeza – a paradise realm. Like an oasis, these fragrant, fertile gardens came to represent a miraculous place of refuge or a haven within a hostile environment. Indeed, like most early gardens, they are found within courtyards or are surrounded by low buildings, rather than lying outside the domestic compound, simply because the outside world was such an unsafe place.
The Persian gardens also had strongly symbolic connotations and used intricate and exquisite patterns in their design. Like a microcosm of the universe, the formally constructed streams and canals represented the rivers of life flowing to the four corners of the earth, while the fountain issued from the heart at the centre. Cypress trees were associated with death and eternal life, while fruit trees, especially the orange, were planted in great numbers due to their rich and bountiful imagery. In Cordoba, the surviving tenth-century mosque gardens of the Court of Oranges still has 100 orange trees standing in perfect rows beside the water channels.
But above all, it was the fragrant rose that was held in the highest esteem and is still found in all Islamic-style gardens, especially since many legends link the rose with the prophet Mohammed. The famous Persian mystic Avicenna dedicated a whole book to the virtues and spiritual qualities of the rose. Roses and jasmine still abound in the gardens around the Taj Mahal in India, which shows a strong classical Persian influence.
Courtyard of the Generalife Garden – one of the oldest Moorish gardens in Spain – located on the Cerro del Sol, adjacent to the Alhambra Palace.
Practical necessity and a highly refined aesthetic sensibility were combined with a profound reverence for nature and a sense of the sacred to create a sanctuary – not away from the world, but within it. Earthly pleasure and divine inspiration partook of the same nature: thus, these early classical, scented gardens were built by the nobility of Persia not only to offer relief from the desert heat but also to provide a secluded place for inner contemplation as well as for amorous dalliance! It is still possible to get a sense of the classical splendour of these ancient Persian masterpieces of design by visiting the Alhambra Palace in Granada, built in southern Spain for the Moorish rulers of the fourteenth century. Here, the soothing sound of water running over stone, the graceful images of trees and arches reflected in still pools, and the heady scent of roses, jasmine and lilies wafting on the warm breeze retain their power to transport the soul to another world.
Some of the most famous early aromatic gardens are the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, which were built by Nebuchadnezzar II for his wife in the sixth century BC. Greek descriptions of these fabulous gardens, which were supported on stone columns and irrigated by streams to keep the terraces moist, depict an image of paradise much like the Persian ideal, with running water, shade and scent. Aromatic wood from the cedar of Lebanon was used extensively in building these gardens and must have created a highly fragrant backdrop for the exotic flowering plants, herbs and trees.
Cedar of Lebanon was also used to make the caskets for embalmed Egyptian kings because of its fine fragrance and great durability. Indeed, the ancient Egyptians were renowned for their knowledge and expertise on aromatic plants, especially regarding their medicinal, cosmetic and ritual applications. In gardens on the banks of the Nile, they cultivated sweet-smelling plants, herbs and spices so as to provide fresh material for their daily requirements, since natural aromatic preparations were considered an intrinsic part of everyday life. One of the first depicted plant expeditions (c. 1495 BC), shown in a wall painting at Karnak, is in search of the incense tree for Queen Hatshepsut. The Egyptians’ exuberant love of nature is evident from the carvings in their temples and their garlanded deities. No fewer than 256 different species are depicted on the walls of the ‘Botanical Garden’, a room in the temple of Amun at Karnak.
Saffron crocus (Crocus sativus), used by the ancient Egyptians as a condiment and perfume material.
Henna flower (Lawsonia inermis), used to make the ancient Egyptian perfume ‘cyprinum’.
The Egyptian priesthood also attached great importance to gardens as places of contemplation. Thus we find walled gardens attached to the temples as tranquil places of retreat. More importantly perhaps in botanic terms, was the fact that known medicinal plants were grown in these temple gardens, and form the earliest-known basis for the botanic garden. The Egyptian Papyrus Ebers manuscript, a materia medica written about 1552 BC (in the time of Moses), contains numerous descriptions of fragrant plants, aromatic remedies and their methods of use. Saffron was employed as a condiment and perfume material; galbanum, mastic and eaglewood were used for fumigation and purification purposes; and cannabis or Indian hemp was used as a sedative and for its narcotic properties. The scented oil from the blue lotus was considered sacred and offered to the pharaohs in their tombs along with narcissi and other aromatic materials. Frankincense and myrrh, especially, were considered invaluable plants throughout the whole of the ancient world, because their fragrant gum-resins formed the basis for most incense. The famous kyphi of Egypt, for example, was a liquid incense recipe whose fragrance, according to Plutarch, ‘allayed anxieties and brightened dreams and was made of those things which delight most in the night.’ This precious perfume was made from a mixture of over 16 aromatic substances including juniper, cardamom, calamus, cyperus (a fragrant grass), mastic, saffron, acacia, cinnamon, peppermint, myrrh and henna.
In Cairo, street sellers sang of henna, ‘Oh odours of Paradise: oh flowers of Henna’: these were tiny white, very fragrant flowers which were also used to produce the enticing perfume ‘cyprinum’. Cleopatra drenched her Nile barge with cyprinum to create an aromatic greeting for Mark Anthony. Henna is also the ‘camphire’ mentioned in the Song of Solomon:
A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse; a spring shut up, a fountain sealed. Thy plants are an orchard of pomegranates with pleasant fruits: camphire and spikenard, saffron, calamus and cinnamon, with trees of frankincense, myrrh and aloes with all the chief spices.
(Rosemary Verey, The Scented Garden)
The enclosed scented garden described in the Bible in the Song of Solomon depicts a sensual paradise where sacred and secular pleasure are united, and provides a model for the medieval ‘hortus conclusus’. Likewise, the Garden of Eden originally showed God and man in a state of complete harmony: in the Talmud, when Adam walked in the Garden of Eden on the first day, ‘he smelled wonderful scents and enjoyed beautiful sights’. But this sense of blissful ease was not to last, for both Judaism and Christianity refer back to the Garden as a place of original ease, a lost paradise, where humanity and nature were in accord with the divine, God.
In the beginning, God created a garden called Eden. Eden is traditionally located in Mesopotamia, probably in the northern part of the region since an apple tree was able to grow there without irrigation. Before the fall, Eden was a fertile, fragrant oasis of delight, magically calm except for the sweet sounds of water and laughter. Since the dawn of civilisation, human kind has ceaselessly endeavoured to recreate this mythical paradise.
(G. Van Zuylen, Visions of Paradise)
This is doubtless the root of our search to create an arcadian paradise over the centuries: an attempt to recreate a sense of perfect harmony. This is even more relevant today when the pressure and problems facing both the individual and society at large seem to be increasing. The Prince of Wales finds his garden at Highgrove in Gloucestershire:
... a place of escape from the noise, rush and often the brutality of the world. It is a place where both humans and wildlife can take sanctuary. The garden in this way can become a glimpse of Paradise; a sacred space where humanity, nature and the Divine meet in harmony.
(Martin Palmer and David Manning, Sacred Gardens)
Blue lotus (Nymphaea caerulea), considered sacred by the ancient Egyptians.
The concise botanical knowledge and skill of the ancient Egyptians was developed by several outstanding Greek men of learning, many of whom studied at the great library of Alexandria. Herodotus and Democrates, who visited Egypt during the fifth century BC, also transmitted directly what they had learned about perfumery and natural therapeutics from the Egyptian physicians. Hippocrates, who was born in Greece about 460 BC and is universally revered as the ‘Father of Medicine’, prescribed various aromatic remedies; indeed, from Greek medical practice there is derived the term ‘iatralypte’, from the physician who cured exclusively through the use of aromatic preparations. Later, Theophrastus (371–287 BC) described over 550 species of plants and the distinguishing nature of scents in his Enquiry into Plants, written about 340 BC. Many familiar fragrant flowers and herbs are mentioned in this work, such as narcissi and lilies, but it is Dioscorides (40–90 AD) who is better known for his De Materia Medica, which described the medicinal use of over 600 plants.
By the fourth century BC the Greeks were also cultivating flower gardens dedicated to the gods and these in turn influenced gardening in Rome. Both the Greek and Roman visions of the ideal garden were influenced by the classical Persian paradise garden, and were usually laid out to a formal design with fruit-bearing trees, herbs and running water. Many aromatic plants were named after nymphs or lovers in Greek legend, such as Artemis or Narcissus. According to myth, it was Apollo who taught the healer Aesclepius that the fragrant lily-of-the-valley could be used as a tonic for the heart. The favoured flower of the Greeks, however, was the rose – the flower of Aphrodite, the goddess of love.
Sadly, under the Romans the rose later became a flaunted symbol of ostentation. Nero had his banqueting floors strewn with rose petals. Roses were also used in garlands for military heroes and were considered essential to everyday life. They also enjoyed a position of great prominence in the Roman garden, which was otherwise mainly given over to aromatic herbs. In their pursuit of sensuous pleasure, the Romans devoted an entire street in Capua simply to the manufacture of different types of scented substances, especially rosewater.
Lily-of-the-valley (Convallaria majalis), according to myth, given to the healer Aesclepius by Apollo.
The Roman knowledge of herbs and aromatic plants was derived mainly from the Greeks, in particular from Dioscorides. Their horticultural knowledge also spread throughout the Roman Empire and much of this knowledge was later preserved in the monasteries. With the conquest of Britain, the Romans brought with them a number of flowering fragrant fruit trees, such as the cherry, pear, quince and peach, and introduced many other familiar plants from their colonies along the Mediterranean coast. Amongst these were such well-known ones as chervil, chives, parsley, rue, onion, fennel, rosemary, southernwood, borage, sage and thyme. Such plants adapted well to more temperate climates and formed the basis for the ‘herbaries’ or herb gardens of the great monasteries which sprang up all over Europe in medieval times. This herbal legacy bequeathed by the Romans also proved invaluable for the development of herbal medicine in Britain. The earliest English herbal, written about the time of the Norman conquest and still preserved in the British Museum, owes its origin to a book written by a Roman doctor, Apuleius Platonicus.
During the Middle Ages, the monasteries not only served as spiritual centres to the community but they were also seats of learning. The study of plants was one of the main areas of intellectual endeavour since herbal medicine was the most common method of treating illness. Concern for physical healing was a mark of Christian philosophy and thus based primarily on practical considerations. Thus the ‘cloister’ garden developed which was devoted to growing useful medicinal herbs and aromatic plants, as well as providing a place of contemplation for the monks.
This style of garden, known in medieval England as the ‘cloister garth’, was a large, enclosed garden with a beautifully kept green lawn in the centre of the monastery or cathedral. Surrounded by stone cloisters with a covered arcade, it provided a place where the monks could stroll in leisurely contemplation or sit at peaceful leisure and view the passing day.
These cloister garths were formally laid out, and often divided into four sections similar to Roman villa gardens. It was originally as a reaction against urbanised Rome that monastic Christianity had arisen with its keen interest in agriculture and gardening – yet Rome still proved pivotal in its horticultural influence in Britain. Water was frequently found in these gardens, as in the early Islamic paradise gardens, and the monks could meditate on the elements. The formal ordering of the cloister garden was also conducive to a state of restful ease – a tranquil haven where the monks or nuns could find the peace that ‘passeth all understanding’. Sometimes an orchard was planted at the sacred eastern end and was used as a place for contemplation on death and the eternal life. The ‘physic’ garden was generally found to the north of the eastern end of the church or sometimes in the cloisters or courtyards besides the church. The famous Benedictine monastery of St Gall in Switzerland, founded in the year 610 AD, served for centuries as an ideal model for monastic gardens throughout Europe. Here, the cloister garth provides the central feature or focal point of the whole design and was divided into four equal sections by footpaths:
The garth is square, an ideal plan based on the description of the Temple built by the Israelites.
(Aben and de Wit, The Enclosed Garden)
Traditional cloister garths can still be found throughout Europe and America, for example at Wells Cathedral, Somerset, in England; at the Basilica of St Francis, Assisi, in Italy; and at the National Cathedral, Washington, in the USA. Within the enclosure, as at St Galls, there were generally two herb gardens: one was the physic garden or infirmary garden, planted with healing medicinal herbs; the second was the kitchen garden. Here, culinary herbs for the table would be grown such as thyme, parsley, rosemary and mint, as well as vegetables – see Chapter 2. Information about medicinal and culinary herbs was exchanged extensively between monasteries over this period. Abbot Benedict of Aniane, in Languedoc, France, is known to have corresponded with his colleagues in Germany and England and exchanged medicinal plants with Alcuin of York around the year 800. In a letter to Charlemagne of France, Alcuin wrote of his hope that:
The French may learn the wonders of gardening from the British, so that a paradise – ‘a garden enclosed’ – may flourish not just in York but also in Tours, and that there might be ‘the plants of paradise’ with the fruits of the orchard.
(Palmer and Manning, Sacred Gardens)
A medieval cloister garden, with surrounding shaded arcade.
The Islamic world encouraged migration of both ideas and plants from Spain and from the East. It was through the influence of the Byzantine church, however, that the Middle Eastern idea of the aromatic garden found its way into the very heart of European culture, initially in the form of a small paradise garden or flower garden. The flower garden generally lay behind the altar to the east of the church, which itself faced east – thereby facing Jerusalem and the rising sun. This garden was placed in the care of the sacristan – the monk in charge of sacred objects such as the high altar. This shows how important the medieval church considered aromatic and sweet-smelling flowers, which were valued both as symbolic votive offerings and for their intrinsic beauty.
This garden was usually round or semi-circular in structure and provided the sacred aromatic flowers and herbs for decorating the altar. The idea of a walled, perfumed garden was symbolically associated with the Garden of Eden, the original paradise, and was upheld in biblical imagery such as in the Song of Solomon.
In 1260, Albertus Magnus, a Dominican monk, specified the requirements of a perfect pleasure garden in much the same terms as its Persian counterpart, having a fountain at the centre and being redolent with perfume:
. . . every sweet-smelling herb such as rue, and sage and basil, and likewise all sorts of flowers, as the violet, columbine, lily, rose, iris and the like ... behind the lawn there may be great diversity of medicinal and scented herbs, not only to delight the senses of smell by their perfume but to refresh the sight with their flowers.
These medieval monastic gardens had a strong sense of the symbolic connotations of plants, flowers and trees. For example, lungwort (Pulmonaria officinalis) was so called because its leaves, which are speckled and marked, were considered to resemble diseased lungs. Sweet violets represented humility, and the earliest of the cultivated lilies, the fragrant white Madonna lily (Lilium candidum), was linked with the Virgin Mary. Above all, the rose was held in the highest esteem. The red apothecary's rose (Rosa gallica var. officinalis), was also closely linked with the Virgin Mary and with Christ's blood. There was a widespread cult of planting ‘Mary gardens’, which featured wildflower meadows: today they are echoed in Christian Marian gardens, which use statues of the Virgin Mary together with lilies and roses, her traditional plants.
A statue of the Virgin Mary in a contemporary Christian Marian garden.
The secular pleasure gardens were the domain of the nobility, and later in the Middle Ages became more linked with sensual delight than contemplation of the eternal, as in the monasteries. These gardens were called hortus deliciarum, or the ‘garden of delight’, a scented sanctuary where men and women could meet discreetly in a romantic setting as opposed to the sacred hortus conclusus of the church. Medieval courtly love, as we often see it depicted and described in poetry, was played out in these fragrant pleasure gardens. Much idealised romantic literature, such as the French allegorical poem Le Roman de la Rose (fifteenth century), contains descriptions of a lover meeting his lady in her private, secret garden and, in this case, warning of the dangers of profane love.
... there was always an abundance of flowers. There were very beautiful violets, fresh, young periwinkles; there were white and red flowers, and wonderful yellow ones. The earth was very artfully decorated and painted with flowers of various colours and sweetest perfumes.
(Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meung c. 1235–1280, Visions of Paradise)
These secluded gardens featured high trellising, overhung with fragrant climbers (often roses or other sweet-scented climbers) and scented chamomile seats for lovers. Hidden rose arbours became the background for courtly love and romance in a highly stylised setting. They often contained a rose garden and a water feature such as a fountain, or a clear pool. Sensuality rather than spirituality became the vogue and fragrant plants emphasised pleasure rather than being transcendent vehicles to the Divine.
Ironically, according to Sue Minter, Curator of the Chelsea Physic Garden, the pleasure garden was originally a:
secret garden associated with the Virgin Mary. The garden represented her virginity and its flowers and fruits, the flowering of her virginity. It was paradise found, as against the paradise lost of the lost Eden.
(Sue Minter, The Healing Garden)
Clearly though, the sacred garden of Mary had lost its primarily religious connotations, and paradise found appeared to be linked more with worldly than divine love!
Detail of The Lady and the Unicorn, Musée de Cluny, Paris.
Medieval tapestries also frequently depicted courtly gardens with seasonal flowers growing wild in grass: ‘flowery meads’, which were highly popular in the Middle Ages. These were places of relaxation and romantic dalliance and included all the flowers seen throughout the year. Some of the most exquisitely beautiful tapestries showing flowery meads are those depicting a lady and a unicorn, from the series The Lady and the Unicorn. Here the lady and her maid are shown fashioning a crown with clove-scented carnations or ‘gilliflowers’, which were extremely popular at the time because of their spicy fragrance. Carnations were also associated with betrothal and marriage on account of their potent, seductive fragrance. These tapestries, hanging in the Musée de Cluny in Paris, were woven around 1500 and were known as millefleurs, meaning ‘a thousand flowers’. They portrayed an abundance of sweetly scented flowers: roses, violets, wallflowers, pansies and forget-me-nots. Flowering fruit trees and aromatic herbs were also shown but always growing in the flowering mead, not in formal beds.
In the middle of the fourteenth century, the Italian poet Giovanni Boccaccio provided a link between the medieval garden and the splendours to come in his collection of tales, the Decameron. In one story, ‘The Valley of the Ladies’, he describes a walled circular garden with a flower-studded lawn (the classical medieval hortus conclusus) with ‘a fountain of pure white marble’. The statue at the centre of the fountain issues forth a jet of water which is circulated in cleverly wrought little channels, a forerunner of the art of hydraulics, a popular feature of the Renaissance.
The influence of the Renaissance, and its revived interest in classical antiquity, which began in Italy in the later part of the thirteenth century, influenced the whole of Europe. It brought with it not only profound changes in thought regarding buildings but also garden and park designs. The basis of this was the classical Italian villa garden in which were found labyrinths, box topiary cut in elaborate designs, water and fountains showing Arabic influence, and pots filled with fragrant flowers. The Italian artist Giorgio Vasari described the Villa Medici, near Florence, as ‘the most magnificent and ornamental garden in Europe’. The gardens of Villa d’Este at Tivoli, begun in 1550 and completed 30 years later, are undoubtedly the most spectacular of the Renaissance period with their elaborate fountains and intricate terracing. But Renaissance gardens were not simply grand statements of ostentation: in the beautiful Palazzo Farnese at Caprarola, a giardino segreto or secret garden (a descendant from the hortus conclusus) provided a haven of tranquillity and intimacy away from the vast sweeping vistas of the rest of the garden. In fact the Renaissance gardens incorporated most of the features of medieval gardens: roses, scented arbours, turfed banks, fountains, walkways, hedged walls and mounts. Aromatic box also was used extensively in topiary and for edging and hedging. The Renaissance garden was thus fundamentally the medieval garden within a classical and expanded form.
Common primrose (Primula vulgaris), used as a bright yellow design feature in Renaissance gardens.
Sweet violets (Viola odorata), used to fill closed knots of topiary.
In England the Renaissance influence led to the establishment of the ‘formal’ garden, which used geometrical shapes to show the domination of man over nature. Early Tudor gardens were characterised by the square knot garden, which was divided into four. Knot gardens had existed in the late medieval period, but it was now with the Tudors and the influence of France, and later in the Elizabethan age, that knot gardens acquired supremacy. These gardens were placed below the principal room of the house or palace so they could be viewed from above to the best effect. They were a vital element of all royal gardens. In 1613, according to Gervase Markham in The English Husbandmen, there were two types of knots: the open knot, which was planted out with aromatic herbs such as thyme, hyssop, rosemary or lavender, then simply filled with coloured earth; and the closed knot, which used the spaces between the knots to display single-coloured flowers, such as violets, sweet williams, primroses or gillyflowers. The knots show a very close relationship with embroidery and marquetry, with the earliest designs to be found in Thomas Hyll's The Profitable Art of Gardening (1568). Looking down from above, these knots would have created a swirling, patterned aromatic display. A recent re-creation of a sixteenth-century knot garden at Barnsley House, Gloucestershire, is made up of green and gold box, intertwined with germander.
RIGHT: The Love Garden at the Château of Villandry, France, with topiary of box and yew interspersed with symbolically blood-red flowers.
By the sixteenth century, gardens in England, France and the Netherlands shared many characteristics. Charles III and Henry II of France were deeply impressed by the Italian villas and their gardens, as was Henry VIII of England. They all saw the garden as a direct expression of the strength of the monarchy and regal power, and some of the most outstanding and magnificent gardens of the period were the great heraldic gardens. In England these were Hampton Court, Whitehall and Nonsuch, constructed for Henry VIII. All three gardens display ornate painted and gilded wooden heraldry, symbols of the House of Tudor, together with aspects of the medieval garden such as fountains, roses, arbours, mounts and walkways. Both Hampton Court and Whitehall showed a marked French influence. Whitehall had walkways lined with low-growing scented herbs (referred to as ‘spices’ in descriptions of the time) and both had extensive orchards. Nonsuch no longer exists and was not completed by the time of Henry VIII's death, but was intended to be the most princely of all his palaces. The garden was a series of courtyards opening one onto the other, and according to Thomas Plattner in 1599 it was suitably named ‘for there is not its equal in England’. In Elizabethan times, under Lord Lumley it became one of the most outstanding gardens of the times. Nonsuch had 12 arbours, a maze with unusually high hedges, an orchard and a knot garden. Such royal gardens were gardens of pleasure with sweetly scented roses and fragrant fruit trees, besides the knots and formal walks. In 1509 Stephen Hawes, in The History of Graunde Amour and la Bel Pucel, describes the early Tudor royal gardens:
Than in we wente to the garden gloryous, Lyke to a place of pleasure most solacyous.
Primula polyanthus, a type of hybrid primrose cultivated by the Huguenot ‘florists’ for colour and fragrance.
Tulip, most likely brought to England by the Huguenots in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
It was largely through the influence of Catherine de Medici, wife to King Henry II, that Italian ideas were brought to bear on French gardening practices at this time. The key to the new French style was the ornamental parterre or garden bed, which was usually fashioned using intricate box hedging. Although knot gardens had been an intrinsic part of the Italian Renaissance garden, the French refined their design using elaborate planting schemes in what came to be known as broderie, since they resembled a piece of finely made embroidery. These were best viewed from above, as were the English gardens of the Tudor and Elizabethan period, but here they were less romantic and more formalised and geometric in style than their British counterparts.
The first parterre de broderie was made by Jacques Mollet at the end of the sixteenth century at Anet, but the most prominent French garden of the period was the Paris Jardin des Tuileries commissioned by Catherine de Medici. Pierre le Nôtre designed the fabulous parterres nearest the palace, while his grandson André became one of the most influential garden designers in history. It was he who conceived the great gardens at Vaux, constructed on a major cross axis with a central fountain reminiscent of the Persian paradise ideal. Later, he provided the genius behind the gardens at the palace of Versailles, for the young Louis XlV. The Versailles gardens, whose grand formal layout corresponded to the four points of the compass, took the whole of Europe by storm: rulers in Austria, Germany, Spain and even the Russian king, Peter the Great, wanted their own version of Versailles! Le Nôtre's influence reached as far as America, for Pierre L’Enfant's design for Washington DC is based on one of Le Nôtre's favourite themes – the patte d’oie or ‘goosefoot pattern’, describing a series of radiating avenues.
Louis XIV, the Sun King, was in fact infatuated with all aspects of gardening. At Versailles he commissioned a special potager incorporating fruit trees, vegetables, herbs and fragrant flowers – a project that took over five years to complete. He also personally sponsored plant expeditions to bring back specimens from the New World and Far East. Exotic plants would later inundate the whole of Europe as world horizons expanded over the following centuries.
The late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw French Protestants, the Huguenots, fleeing from religious persecution and settling in East Anglia, Lancashire and southern England. They brought with them specialist gardening knowledge and many new scented flowers, and helped revive an interest in horticulture at a time when it was waning. They cultivated flowers specifically for their aesthetic appeal and were known as ‘florists’: their aim was to create perfect blooms with the best colour and most fragrance. There were eight flowers in particular attributed to them: the hyacinth, auricula, carnation, pink, ranunculus, tulip, polyanthus and anemone. To them we owe the wide diversity of pinks, carnations, polyanthus and auriculas which can still be found in our gardens today.
Voyages of discovery now brought new species to Europe, including many well-known scented species such as narcissus and tuberose, which were propagated in the new botanical gardens. The Flemish botanist Charles de l’Ecluse was the first scientific horticulturalist and served as the superintendant of the Leiden Botanic Garden. He cultivated many exotic Middle Eastern bulbs and tubers including hyacinths, irises, lilies, gladioli, sunflowers and especially tulips – changing the face of northern European gardens forever. The ingenious devices and flamboyant designs of the late Renaissance gardens, together with the classical mystique of the medieval pleasure garden, virtually disappeared, for now plants were arranged strictly according to species and genus. The Italian gardens of Padua and Pisa were founded in 1543, and in the seventeenth century two great physic gardens were developed in England: one at Oxford and the other at Chelsea. The Oxford physic garden became a botanic garden, as did Kew, which was also originally a physic garden created in the eighteenth century by the Princess of Wales. Other important botanical gardens were founded in Heidelberg, Montpellier and Paris.
The Orangery of the Palace of Versailles, France, designed by André le Nôtre.
Sadly, by the eighteenth century scented plants had become undesirable in fashionable gardens. This was due to the influence of the landscape movement, designed and implemented by ‘Capability’ Brown, Humphry Repton, and others from 1720 onwards. They systematically destroyed the old formal gardens of the earlier centuries, such as the Elizabethan garden at Longleat, to replace them with the landscaped garden. Scented flowers were banished from sight and were kept at a distance from the house or planted in walled flower gardens so as not to disturb the new sweeping designs. Later, when Repton and John Loudon did recommend plants to be grown closer to the house, they made no particular reference to scented plants, in comparison to the earlier enthusiasm and ardour of the sixteenth-century writers. This decline continued throughout the nineteenth century in Britain with the Victorians’ passion for brightly coloured bedding. To the credit of the Victorians, however, they did bring flowers closer to the house, but fragrance was secondary to colour and dramatic massed effect.
It was not until the nineteenth century with William Robinson, more renowned perhaps as a horticultural writer than a gardener, and Gertrude Jekyll, who combined both strongly aesthetic and practical gardening knowledge, that sweetly scented planting came back into fashion in Britain. William Robinson devoted a whole chapter to fragrance in his classic work The English Flower Garden:
A man who makes a garden should have a heart for plants that have the gift of sweetness as well as beauty of form and colour ... No one may be richer in fragrance than the wise man who plants hardy shrubs and flowering trees ... families of fragrant things.
In The Wild Garden, Robinson encouraged the natural development and respect of different plant forms, flowers and foliage, and it was his insistence on informality and his concept of permanent planting which marked the beginning of the garden as we know it today. Although primarily known for her colour-coded planting, Gertrude Jekyll was also responsible for reviving a number of fragrant old plants that had fallen out of fashion, including several old-fashioned rose varieties. Together they made an enormous impact on the development of English, continental and American gardens in the twentieth century.
Hidcote Manor Garden, designed as a series of ‘rooms’. Many of the plants at Hidcote are scented, including old-fashioned scented roses.
Beginning in 1946, another British designer, Vita Sackville-West, began writing regular columns for the Observer in London and transformed the direction of contemporary gardening ideas. Her greatest masterpiece was undoubtedly the garden at Sissinghurst, still considered the most quintessential British garden, which was styled around a series of interconnecting ‘rooms’. The inspiration for its design was derived directly from her love of Renaissance gardens, the medieval hortus conclusus and from the magical walled gardens of Persia ablaze with colour and endowed with wonderful scents. In many ways, Sissinghurst could be said to epitomise the ancient scented paradise ideal within a contemporary setting: the ‘white garden’ especially, redolent with scent, is of international renown. Hidcote Manor Garden, in Gloucestershire, England, conceived by the American designer Major Lawrence Johnston, who purchased the property in 1907, has also been an inspiration to gardeners internationally. Like Sissinghurst, the overall plan is based on a variety of garden ‘rooms’ set around a central axis, and shows a definite Italian and French Renaissance influence.
The American landscape architect Nellie B. Allen (1869–1961) was particularly impressed by her visits to these English gardens, as well as Gertrude Jekyll's own garden in Surrey and Great Dixter in Sussex, laid out by Jekyll's collaborator, the English architect Edwin Lutyens. Allen's own specialties were knot gardens, geometrically designed enclosures bordered by green hedges, and walled gardens which showed her love of the medieval hortus conclusus and the ancient scented Persian paradise gardens. An original watercolour design entitled A Persian Garden (1919), for example, shows an enclosed garden with a central pool set beside arched columns encircled by cypress trees. Ellen Shipman, who collaborated with Charles Platt on many famous gardens across the USA, also employed the ‘walled garden formula’, frequently using fragrant plants and symmetrical designs with a central sundial or fountain feature. Other Americans, including Helena Ely, Charles Gillette, Martha Hutcheson, Beatrix Farrand, Louisa King and Rose Nichols, were also influenced in their work both by the English traditional garden and by European designs – and in the case of Nichols (better known as a writer), by Moorish and Middle Eastern paradise gardens. But it is important to note that these are not the only gardening writers of the last one hundred years to have had an impact. Roy Genders’ Scented Flora of the World, first published in 1977, is a modern classic on fragrant plants, as is Rosemary Verey's The Scented Garden (1981), which covers a range of traditional and modern aromatic garden styles.
Great Dixter house and garden, home of gardener and garden writer Christoper Lloyd.
