Scented Herb Garden

The earliest scented gardens were built in the courtyards of Persian houses over 2,000 years ago. These gardens were generally square or rectangular, and often they were divided into four by streams flowing from a central fountain. The name for these enclosed gardens was pairidaeza, the origin of our word 'paradise'. The Persians, who were superb gardeners, required three main qualities of their paradises: running water, shade and scent.

It was through the Byzantine church that such gardens found their way into western Europe, initially in the form of the cloister gardens soon to be found in every monastery. The idea of a walled, perfumed garden found ready echoes in the medieval Christian tradition, accustomed as it was to viewing the whole of creation in symbolic terms. Biblical references, from the Garden of Eden to the Song of Songs, had by now confirmed such gardens as images of Paradise itself.

In 1260 Albertus Magnus, a Dominican monk, specified the requirements of a perfect pleasure garden: there should be a fountain and a lawn of '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'. He also suggested that 'Behind the lawn there may be great diversity of medicinal and scented herbs, not only to delight the sense of smell by their perfume but to refresh the sight with their flowers'.

The rose had been introduced into western Europe by the crusaders. In fact, the original meaning of the word rosary is a round rose garden dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Although the earliest rosaries were built on holy ground, sixteenth-century paintings show that the style was adopted in private gardens where rose gardens and arbors were built by royalty and the rich.

The other sacred flower of the early Christian church was the beautiful and highly scented Madonna lily, Lilium candidum. In monastery gardens, roses and lilies were grown together with specially aromatic herbs such as lavender and rosemary. Garden historians believe that the medieval romance garden and the Renaissance love garden were primarily rose and herb gardens, as much esteemed for their aesthetic qualities as for their usefulness.

The heyday of the scented garden was undoubtedly during the reign of Elizabeth I when public taste enjoyed sweetly scented food, rooms and clothes. The mistress of an Elizabethan manor house cultivated fragrant flowers and aromatic plants in a secluded formal garden usually hedged with rose briars and fruit trees not only for the pleasure of walking and sitting there, but also to provide the ingredients for her stillroom. Here, she prepared 'sweet waters' from rose petals and rosemary flowers and healing lotions from the stems of the Madonna lily and spikes of lavender. Aromatic herbs like hyssop and rue were grown for strewing over the floors of rooms to purify the air, and their dried flowers were stuffed into cushions and pillows to encourage unbroken sleep.

Comments