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.
David Hughes
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.
Gordon Bell
Aromatic Herbs for Heath & Cooking
Aromatic herbs have been used for well-being for thousands of years. This chapter discusses how the health properties of plants have been used in the past, and shows you how you can use plants in your cooking today.
Echinacea (Echinacea purpurea) and bergamot (Monarda didyma), two plants renowned for their healing properties.
Del Boy
EARLY HERB GARDENS
Herbs have been used for thousands of years by all cultures alike and were the first plants to have been cultivated by mankind. The range of plants that we call herbs has, however, changed over the centuries in Europe. At one time, many familiar flowers such as pinks, peonies, roses and irises were termed herbs, as were most of our common vegetables. In the sixteenth century, for example, carrots and onions were known as pot herbs, whereas lettuces and radishes were called salad herbs. Many aromatic plants, such as sweet woodruff (Galium odoratum) and meadowsweet (Filipendula ulmaria), were also grown purely for their household uses. Although a large proportion of herbs are scented and contain aromatic oils, this is not always the case – many herbs are not fragrant and do not contain any essential oils at all.
Sweet woodruff (Galium odoratum), above, and meadowsweet (Filipendula ulmaria), below, were traditionally grown to be strewn on floors to create a pleasant aroma.
Scisetti Alfio
Sweet woodruff (Galium odoratum), were traditionally grown to be strewn on floors to create a pleasant aroma.
Maksimilian
THE MEDICINAL OR PHYSIC GARDEN
It was in the medieval monastic gardens, however, that the first serious study of herbs took place in Europe and where herbs were grown for their medicinal, culinary and aromatic properties. Herbal treatment was the earliest form of medicine, and consequently the main reason for growing herbs was for their therapeutic benefits. Before the advent of modern drugs, plant medicine was the principal way of combating all kinds of disease, including infections, injury – and witchcraft. The notion of the physic garden began in Europe from the sixth century onwards, when herb gardens were planted next to the infirmary in monasteries. Formal physic gardens were established in Italy in the sixteenth century, first in Pisa in 1543, then in Padua and Florence. Germany, France, Sweden and the Netherlands followed suit, while the first physic garden in England was the Oxford Physic Garden, planted in 1621. After Edinburgh’s Physic Garden, the Chelsea Physic Garden was founded in 1673. This is the only physic garden in Britain that has not been turned into a botanic garden and retains its original name.
The physic garden was usually a large plot with raised beds, intersected by paths, where herbs such as lavender, rue, sage, mint and rosemary were each individually confined to a separate bed to make harvesting and identification easier. Both the physic garden and the cloister garth were based on this formal arrangement of paths and beds laid out in regular geometric shapes. The beds were often edged with pegged wooden boards to keep the soil in place, or fences of wattle, and also featured low hedging of compact aromatic shrubs such as box, lavender, rosemary or santolina. Many contemporary herb gardens are still based on these early physic garden designs, using either a grid basis or a cruciform structure – a simple cross with a central circular bed. (See Chapter 6: Planning an Aromatherapy Garden, for other traditional herb garden designs.)
From the Middle Ages onwards, significance was also given to the astrological connection between herbs and the parts of the body ruled