Honeysuckle (Lonicera periclymenum)

Honeysuckle by Trish Steel, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

"And bid her steal into the pleached bower,

Where honeysuckles, ripen'd by the sun
Forbid the sun to enter."

- Much Ado About Nothing, Act III, Scene 1

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.