A Biography of English Gardens and Their Flowers

A biography of English Gardens and their flowers

Janet Merza

Smashwords Second edition

Copyright: Janet Merza 2017

To my father, who loved his garden

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Contents:

Pre-historic England

Celtic England

Roman England

Anglo-Saxon England

Norman England

Medieval England

Tudor England

Stuart and Georgian England

Victorian England

Index of flowers:

Anemone

Aster

Bluebell

Broom

Buttercup

Camellia

Carnation - See Pink

Chrysanthemum

Clematis

Columbine

Cornflower

Cowslip

Crocus

Cyclamen

Daffodil

Dahlia

Daisy

Delphinium

Forget-me-not

Foxglove

Geranium

Heartsease

Heather

Hollyhock

Honeysuckle

Hyacinth

Iris

Jasmine

Lavender

Lily-of-the-valley

Lupin

Madonna Lily

Marigold

Nasturtium

Peony

Periwinkle

Pink

Poppy

Primrose

Rose

Saxifrage

Snowdrop

Stock

Sunflower

Sweetpea

Sweet William

Tulip

Violet

Wallflower

Other books by Janet Merza

PRE-HISTORIC ENGLAND

Imagine the earth without its covering of greenery – without the small greenery of grassy slopes and the towering greenery of trees. Imagine it without colour – no flowers, no autumn leaves, no ripening fruits - just rocky lumps of land stretching from shoreline to skyline in various shades of grey and brown. The land was lifeless, but the planet certainly wasn’t. Life had been thriving in the seas since shortly after the newly formed planet had cooled enough for liquid water to exist, but it was a long time before primitive aquatic plants ventured onto the dry and inhospitable land. For uncounted ages they slowly colonised the edges of their world, the tidal flats and marshy shores, gradually extending their range over the barren earth until all the land, from the sea’s edge to the snow line, was covered by a rich variety of plant life. Naturally this greening of the planet suffered many setbacks as climates changed and lands moved, but this book starts when the most recent challenge to English plants – the last ice age – ended.

For hundreds of thousands of years, massive ice sheets had covered northern lands, grinding their way south as temperatures fell and then retreating during the warmer inter-glacial times. Each time the ice moved south into Northern Europe a land bridge was exposed between England and the continent and each time it retreated the bridge was submerged again as the ice melted and sea levels rose. Every time the ice came south into England it annihilated many of our native plants and every time it retreated, the seas rose, cutting us off from mainland Europe and preventing the re-migration of continental plants. After thousands of years of this ebb and flow of ice, our stock of native plants was decimated and when it was all over and the land bridge finally and permanently submerged, we were left with a native flora of only 1,500 flowering plants compared with France's 6,000. A good example of these lost plants is the rhododendron, a shrub unknown to the English before it was introduced in the seventeenth century as an exotic from the Far East, yet its pollen has been found in Irish sediments dating from one of the inter-glacial periods. It obviously survived a few of the ice advances but succumbed in the end and, unable to return once the land bridge was gone, had to wait perhaps ten thousand years before being readmitted by man.

By 5,500 BCE the ice age was over, Britain was indisputably an island and our 1,500 survivors were the sum total of our native stock. Everything that has arrived since then, whether accidentally or as an intentional introduction is officially classed as an alien. This may seem a very easy rule, giving a clear dividing line between alien and native, but since man had arrived in England before the land bridge was finally destroyed, certain aliens pre-date the 5,500 BCE cut-off line.

English native plants:

Heather:

For most of us, heather is synonymous with the panoramic scenery displayed on Scottish postcards. It certainly looks impressive, as it swathes the mountain sides in a purple-pink haze, but the people who actually lived in these remote and harsh environments valued the heather for a great deal more than its looks. Above all, it was so eminently practical. Mixed with earth and straw, it made the walls of the old crofters' cottages, and on its own provided the thatched roof. It was also their staple fuel, their source of material for baskets, rope and brooms, as well as being an essential feed for their sheep. An orange dye could also be made from it and after the crofter had spent a long day using the heather in every other conceivable way, it provided him with a very comfy, scented bed on which to sleep:

"Before the heath has lost the dew,

This morn a couch was pulled for you,

On yonder mountain's purple head".

Sir Walter Scott.

These heather beds were so comfortable that during the highland clearances many Scots insisted on taking their old beds with them when they emigrated to the United States, presumably because they didn't trust the foreign beds that they would be faced with over there. It is odd to think that this plant, now so widespread in America, was introduced to the New World accidentally through a number of old, discarded mattresses. Although there are very few crofters left to make use of this versatile plant, the game and grouse for which the Scottish highlands were emptied find the heather every bit as useful as the humans did in providing food and shelter. The deer and grouse only lose out when it comes to non-essential uses of the plant. Uniquely in creation, if man is blessed with a plentiful and constant supply of a staple crop, he invariably manages to find a way of intoxicating himself with it. The Chinese use rice, the Irish potatoes, and the Scots (or more precisely the Picts) used the heather:

"For once thy mantling juice was seen to laugh

In pearly cups, which monarchs loved to quaff;

And frequently waked the wild inspired lay

On Teviot's hills beneath the Pictish sway."

Leyden.

Unfortunately, or possibly not, this particular recipe has been lost along with the Picts themselves under the advancing tide of tribes that moved up from the south of Britain. Since then, heather has played only a minor role in the saga of alcoholic concoctions and has been used, if at all, merely to flavour ale.

Most of the heathers we know are small, easily-identified woody shrubs, which grow no more than about two feet high, but these are a very tame selection of the wide range available. On the slopes of Killimanjaro in Africa there are heather trees that grow to a height of twelve metres or more, but I doubt whether these giant heathers have quite the attraction for honeybees that their smaller relations possess. Most authorities are agreed that heather honey is the best possible sort to have, but no one these days seems to credit it with quite the powers bestowed on it by the Saxons. They made a sort of mead, a honey wine, out of it and Saxon men would drink one cupful of this every day for the first thirty days of marriage. The modern word honeymoon comes from this practical custom and originally referred to the taking of honey to keep up one's strength during the first moon of marriage.

Daisy:

This is an English native plant which, although rarely invited, usually finds its way into even the most carefully tended lawns. Only the very sternest of gardeners could fail to appreciate the sight of its bright faces dotting the grass. It grows wild all over Europe and was a familiar plant to the ancient Mediterranean civilisations. Unlike the Anglo-Saxons who named the flower 'daeges eage', 'day's eye' from its habit of opening and closing with the sun, the Greeks revered the daisy for its resemblance to the moon, and dedicated it to Artemis. Chaucer had no hesitation in naming it as his favourite flower:

‘.... of alle the floures in the mede,

Than love I most these floures white and rede,

Swiche as men callen daysies in our toun'.

Apart from being such an attractive addition to the greensward, the daisy was also reputed to have remarkable medicinal properties. Roman doctors had used to it staunch wounds (hence its name ‘bellis’ from the Latin for war) and Gerard, the sixteenth century herbalist and apothecary, called it 'bruisewort'. He claimed that it '...do mitigate all kinds of paines, but especially in the joints, and gout, if they be stamped with new butter unsalted and applied upon the pained place'. Typically he adds the non-sequitur that 'the juice of the leaves and roots.... given to little dogs with milke, keepeth them from growing great.'

As you would expect from such a common and popular flower, it has a number of names. In Scotland it is often known as ‘bairnwort’, probably because of an old Celtic ballad that claimed the daisy was dropped onto the earth as consolation to a bereaved mother on the death of her child. The daisy became known as the flower of innocence and the newborn and in Somerset it is also known as 'baby's pet'. Many European countries know it as ‘marguerite’, which is French for pearl, which the daisy buds were thought to resemble and in Germany it is known as ‘meadow-pearl’. Margaret of Anjou used the flower as her heraldic device and Francis I called his sister Margaret his marguerite of marguerites - his pearl of pearls.

Country tradition in England says that summer has only really arrived when you can put your foot down on a sizeable clump of daisies. The exact number required varies according to county from five to nine, so depending on which bit of England you are in at the time, it's either summer or it isn't. (Perhaps this is the only sensible way to define the season in a country where it is impossible to use the weather as any sort of guide). Less pleasantly, 'pushing up daisies' is used as a synonym for death. Keats may have been responsible for this euphemism or he may just have been voicing a commonly held thought when, shortly before he died, he said that he felt the daisies growing over him.

The common lawn daisy is far and away the most well known variety, but it is not the only one to be found in England. The Elizabethans frequently grew double daisies and they also had a variety called the 'hen and chickens' or 'childing' daisy, which had a number of smaller flowers encircling the main daisy bloom.

Finally, the daisy (along with quite a few other flowers) can lay claim to being the source of the 'he loves me, he loves me not' game and one of its common names, ‘measure of love’, reflects this. Since the daisy generally has an odd number of petals, anyone wise enough to start with the assumption that they are loved is very likely to end with confirmation of the fact. When Shelley attempted a spot of love divination, he must have either started off on the wrong foot or else he was using a different flower, because:

'Full half an hour today, I tried my lot

With various flowers, and every one still said

'She loves me - loves me not'.

Lily-of-the-valley

This is also thought to be a native flower and it would be odd if it weren’t as it seems to thrive in all sorts of climates and grows prolifically over most of Europe from Italy to Lapland. The Finns, who by the nature of things have even fewer native plants than us, have shown their appreciation by making it their national flower. In pagan times it was considered the sacred flower of Ostara, the Norse goddess of the dawn but, as usual, Christianity tried to smother such undesirable associations and quickly invented its own more appropriate legends and stories. One example of these is the ancient Sussex legend that has the lily-of-the-valley springing up from the blood spilt by St Leonard as he battled with a dragon in Horsham Woods, one part of which is still known today as St Leonard’s Forest. The old Somerset name of ‘lady’s tears’ was given to the flower as it supposedly sprang from the tears shed by Mary on the death of Jesus.

Despite being a common native flower in Britain, it wasn’t actually cultivated by gardeners until well into the Middle Ages. Thomas Hyll wrote in 1568: The Wood Lillie or Lillie of the Valley is a flower mervellous sweete…..growing properly in woods….but now is brought and planted in gardens. It probably made the transition from woodland to flowerbed because of its medicinal properties rather than the aesthetics of its beauty and sweet scent. It was believed to be a certain cure for an enormous range of diseases that included palsy, apoplexy, weak memory, inflammation of the eyes, gout and that wonderful condition, ‘affairs of the heart’. Not surprisingly in view of this list, it was so highly valued that the only containers made of pure silver or gold were thought suitable for storing its precious oils and essences.

Although we no longer expect the plant to perform medical miracles, the dried flowers are still used today as an ingredient in certain eye medicines. Incidentally, the medieval religious orders believed the lily-of-the-valley to be that famous lily of the field that toiled not, neither did it spin, but unfortunately their faith far exceeded their botanical knowledge because the flower is completely unknown in the Middle East.

Foxglove

This is another of our native plants that was unknown to the ancient civilisations, probably because it grows wild only in Western Europe. It has none of the classical legends or medicinal properties that were invariably given to plants with a more Mediterranean background although presumably the Romans would have noticed the flower during their excursions into the barbaric regions north of the Alps.

The name foxglove was coined in 1542 by a botanist called Fuchs and it was possibly a derivative of folks-glew, which in turn came from the Anglo-Saxon gliew meaning music. This refers back to a popular musical instrument of an earlier time that was said to resemble the foxglove as it consisted of a ring of bells hanging from an arched support. Another possible explanation is that traditionally the bad fairies allowed foxes to wear the flowers on their paws in order to disguise their