As well as food and medicine, the medieval garden provided pleasure, repose and refreshment to the senses. From detailed manuscript descriptions and illustrations, Sylvia Landsberg builds up a picture of the various styles of garden from the small enclosed herber with plant borders, turf benches, and rose-covered trellises, to the vast cultivated parks of royalty and nobility. Amongst the species she finds in a fifteenth-century plant inventory are the familiar violet, lily and columbine, sage, basil and sorrel, pear, apple and vine, all still available to the modern...
As well as food and medicine, the medieval garden provided pleasure, repose and refreshment to the senses. From detailed manuscript descriptions an...