Memorial Plants: Part 3 - Herbs & Flowers
Part 1 - Trees | Part 2 - Roses | May 2010 Update
Throughout history, gardens have reflected the social and economic circumstances of the period, as well as matching the status and requirements of the owners.
When the Roman Empire collapsed, Europe went into decline and it was only after the Norman occupation that England came back to life, and gardening became more than just a struggle to grow food.
Monasteries were the main source of knowledge and practical skills, serving not only the monks, but also visitors and the local community. Within the security of the monastery there would be orchards, vegetable gardens, physic gardens, vineyards, cloisters for meditation, and in some places a 'paradise', or obedientary, for quiet meditation and to provide a supply of flowers and greenery for church festivals. This feature was also common in many parish churches., so our current ideas for St. Lawrence are only a rehash of practices used nine hundred years ago! None of these monastic gardens survived the Reformation but there is considerable documentary evidence, a notable example being Christ Church, Canterbury.
Outside the monasteries social status became a dominant feature. Royalty had vast pleasure parks, acres of orchards, private ornamental gardens for the ladies and extensive kitchen gardens. The middle class yeomen would have had orchards and vegetable gardens for 'potage' and a good supply of medicinal herbs.
A superb example of a yeoman's garden is found in Singleton Park in the Weald and Downland Museum, near Chichester. 'Bayleaf' is a medieval farmhouse taken from the site of the Bough Beach Reservoir before it was inundated.
Lower down the scale, the working class might have had small plots to grow a few vegetables, topped up with native wild plants.
Our aim in St. Lawrence's Churchyard is to create a blend of a few of these elements. The monastic cemetery orchard is represented by the Mulberry, Medlar, Quince and Cherry and the ornamental garden by the Bay, Laburnum, and Glastonbury Thorn.
The medieval ornamental garden would certainly have had the three rose species we are planting - Alba, Gallica and Damascena. In the St. Lawrence scheme the roses will be under-planted with native or early introduction bulbs (daffodils, snowdrops, crocus, etc. - but NOT wild garlic or bluebells).
Vegetables and annual herbs (with the possible exception of Calendula) will not be introduced, but the 'Herber' on the south side3 wall of the church will contain many of the 'sweet herbs' of the period - woody plants such as lavender, rosemary, wormwood, santolina, sage, germander and thyme - and herbaceous plants such as lilies, catmint, pinks, wallflowers, hollyhocks, pulmanaria, hellebores, etc. In the middle ages, many of theses plants would have been used medicinally and in cooking (or for strewing on the floors to improve hygiene), but we shall be content with the aesthetics.
The final piece of the medieval garden we would like to establish is the 'Flowering Mead' - an area of turf in which wild flowers are encouraged to grow (again a very fashionable departure from Victorian formality).
It is interesting to record that in Queen Eleanor's Garden reconstruction in Winchester the scheme was a complete failure - the visiting public wanted a well-manicured lawn! When we visited, there was just one pathetic clump of snowdrops. In the churchyard we shall encourage primroses, cowslips, wild violets (these are already there), daisies, etc., in a defined area to avoid public outcry.
This, then, is our proposal for St. Lawrence's Churchyard. We hope it will please our congregation and visitors. If you have any comments, suggestions for additions or deletions, or requests for further information, they would be very welcome.
An overall planting plan can be seen here.
John Gilbert
From The Beacon, April 2009
