[Publib] Bard's Gardens

[Backwage at aol.com]

And now about those Shakespeare gardens.  For those of you who like to  
begin with research, go here:  
_http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare_garden_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare_garden)  and  see about the 
subject.  For the rest, understand that there has been a sort  of horticultural 
mania for Shakespeare-themed gardens in the English-spouting  world.  Some 
fool or other gets a load of money and decides to throw down  some pansies on 
the evidence that the good old Bard himself wrote about  'em.  
 
No harm done there.  The problem as I've found it is that the concept  
makes a tough theme for a garden.  The different species are also hard  to 
cultivate in some areas (outside England) and they don't always make a  decent 
presentation (i.e., bloom) at the same moment.  Then there is the  problem of 
authenticity.  If one desires to have planted the actual types  of plants 
and flowers present and available in Shakespeare's time, the garden  will look 
odd to the contemporary viewer.  For example, Shakespeare's  eglantine rose 
(Rosa rubiginosa) is a very gangly, aggressive plant with  fantastically 
hooked thorns which blooms only once each year--the actual flowers  are the 
size of a quarter, and unimpressive to today's gardener.  I had one  of these 
plants at my old house.  It got no bigger than a master bedroom,  could have 
killed a passer-by, and never ever gave off its reputed scent of  apples, 
even with its fresh leaves were crushed according to the rule.  On  the other 
hand the hips left behind later were quite pretty in winter.
 
If you want the pansies Shakespeare knew, you will find them almost  
microscopically small in flower, not the huge clown-faced things of today.   Other 
plants will present the same situation.
 
One nice alternative to the authentic garden is to plant roses with names  
from Shakespeare's plays.  Grower David Austin has done a splendid job of  
"recreating" old rose appearance and fragrance, and even naming some roses 
after  you-know-who's characters.  Go here to see:  
_http://www.davidaustinroses.com/american/Advanced.asp_ 
(http://www.davidaustinroses.com/american/Advanced.asp) 
 
Now, these are also not the roses of olden times, but those of a later  
era--if that.  They are a good attempt at reviving what used to be best in  
older roses and a lot of fun to grow.  If however you are a rose person,  which 
assumes you enjoy that package of mingled joys and frustrations.  
 
Librarians will be pleased to know that practically every author, literary  
character and/or famous place in literature has had a rose (and sometime 
other  plant) named after it.  Want to find out?  Google in the name of the  
person and then the word 'rose.'  It's a joke among rose fanciers that  there 
is not an Adolf Hitler rose only because the stock were all killed during  
the war.
 
By the way, to where would you direct a patron who wished a comprehensive  
listing of all modern roses?  And where to find the growers of same?   Ah, 
I'll leave that to you to discover.  And Ruth, don't you dare tell  them.
 
Michael McGrorty
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