Herbs for a Shakespeare Garden

Here is a list of herbs to include in a Shakespeare garden. Not only are they beautiful and fragrant they are also very useful, practical plants to grow. Add them to stews, soups and salads, or use them as the Elizabethan's did and make your own Strewings, Nosegays and beauty salves. You could even create your own Shakespeare fragrance or perfume.

Herbs for a Shakespeare garden include: Lavender, Mint, Savory, Marjoram, Marigold, Wild Thyme, Chamomile, Parsley, Rosemary and Fennel.

"Here's flowers for you:

Hot lavender, mints, savory and marjoram"

- The Winter's Tale, Act IV, Scene 4

Lavender (Lavandula angustifolia)

 

Strewing Herbs

Part of the purpose of a medieval and Elizabethan garden was to provide the household with strewing herbs. In medieval dwellings floors were carpeted with rushes, reeds or straw, for insulation and to provide bedding for members of the lower household. They also served to soak up spillages and dropped food. However, these floor coverings were only cleaned out and replaced once or twice a year, so to counteract the accumulated odours fragrant herbs were scattered (strewn) on top of them, releasing their scents when they were walked upon. Some of these herbs also acted as insect and pest repellants.

How To Plant A Shakespeare Garden

Anne Hathaway's Cottage Garden by Richard Peat CC BY-SA 2

In his collected works Shakespeare refers to over two hundred species of plants, with twenty-nine scenes taking place in gardens or in orchards. Shakespeare’s references to flowers and plants not only gave his plays a sense of place, like the Arden forest in As You Like It, the fairy forest of A Midsummer Night’s Dream or the rugged Scottish landscape of Macbeth. They also served as extended metaphors for human emotions and the human condition.

To honour the talents of the Bard why not create a Shakespeare inspired garden. Here are a few ideas on the how to do so.

Elizabethan Gardens

The Elizabethan garden followed in the tradition of the early medieval garden in that it was both functional and decorative. It provided food and medicine for the household as well as herbs and flowers for floor strewing and cloth dying.  The medieval garden also had a separate area for pleasure or for religious contemplation. It was referred to as a Hortus Conclusus, Latin for enclosed garden, or a Pleasaunce, a garden of delight. The Pleasaunce was a small secluded area for recreation, as Esther Singleton remarks in her book The Shakespeare Garden, it was literally a place of re-creation, a place to renew the body and refresh the mind and spirit.