The Grass is Greener

by Tom Fort

  If we then return to Bartholomew, we find him warbling about his meads ‘y-hight with herb and grass and flowers of diverse kind. And therefore, for fairness and green springing that is within, it is y-said that meads laugheth.’ This, then, is the medieval lawn, not notably kempt, the grass sparkling with daisies, violets, trefoil, speedwell. And having made the leap from the monastery, the concept of grass as something more than a source of food for sheep and cattle took hold in the developing English artistic consciousness. In Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women, the good women disported themselves

  Upon the small, soft, sweet grass,

  that was with flowers sweet embroidered all

  of such sweetness and such odour all.

  A few years later the unknown author of The Floure and the Leafe carolled in anaemic Chaucerian imitation of a herber

  that benched was, and with turves new

  freshly turved, whereof the grene gras

  so small, so thik, so short, so fresh of hew

  that most lyk to grene wol, wot I, it was.

  This earthly paradise corresponds with that encountered by the travellers in Boccaccio’s Decameron in the gardens of the Villa Palmieri near Florence – ‘a meadow plot of green grass, powdered with a thousand flowers, set round with orange and cedar trees’.

  The historian is properly grateful for these fragments. But, in the absence of any surviving medieval English garden, any detailed description of one, or any comprehensive work of instruction from which to make sound deductions, it is tempting to make much – perhaps too much – of the inherently unreliable evidence presented by poets and painters. This is not to suggest that Chaucer and lesser mortals were engaged in deliberate deceit. But, in general, the purpose of art and literature was not to record the world as it was, but to present a brighter, more beautiful, divinely inspired vision; the world as it might be if God’s creatures abandoned their vicious ways and lived according to his Word (the Canterbury Tales being, in part, the glorious exception).

  It is difficult to believe that anyone who read the most popular European poem of the 14th century, Guillaume de Lorus’s Roman de la Rose, can have related the interminable amorous gyrations of its courtly hero to anything happening in their own lives. This was the century of the Black Death, the Peasants’ Revolt, the Hundred Years’ War. Life was assaulted by the prospect of death by violence or putrefying disease, privation, starvation or social upheaval; and it was understandable that the artistic consciousness should have preferred to dwell in a clean, sweet-smelling, idealized kingdom of the imagination.

  This is the setting for the Roman de la Rose, which Chaucer translated from the French. Here, freed from any obligation to engage with life, the courtier could devote himself to the intricacies of love-making, his delicate footsteps directed by the bloodless conventions of courtly love. He progresses, at the speed of a snail, towards his fulfilment, enacted in the centre of a garden in the form of a perfect square, with a fountain at the intersection of its diagonals. The sky is blue, the air warm, the cheeks of the participants untouched by mark of pox, their clothes neat and clean, the birds a-twitter, the trees in blossom, the grass lush and spangled with violets and periwinkles and flowers red and yellow – ‘such plenty there grew never in mead’, Chaucer writes. In the 15th-century illustrations of the poem in the British Museum, we see the courtly company loose in this Eden, prancing around to the strains of harp, oboe and fife-and-drums, beneath their feet a soft carpet of vegetation, their milk-white faces shaded by luxuriant trees.

  It is a world of complete make-believe, purged of ugliness. We meet it in Stefan Lockner’s Madonna in the Rose Arbour, in which the grass is studded with daisies, violets, red clover and strawberries; in the Hennesy Book of Hours, where the saints Cosmos and Damian are seated on a turf bench in the middle of a lawn bright with daisies and camomile; in a fresco of Pinturicchio showing Susannah and the Elders against a background of turf and flowers; in the tapestry known as the Lady with the Unicorn, where the lady receives a jewelled necklace from her maid, standing in a flowery mead.

  I encountered it on my honeymoon, in the chapel built in Granada to contain the remains of the Catholic monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella. It was a Flemish painting of the early 15th century, displaying a fine palace, a garden in which squares of grass are divided by gravel paths, a low wall with peacocks on it, a couple reading under a tree, a knot with spindly trees, a lake with a swan and sloping lawns leading down to it, the grass shorn rather than shaggy.

  So medieval man, or our time parachutist, would have found lawns in the imaginary world of poetry, painting and tapestry; and might have encountered a version of the real thing within the great ecclesiastical institutions, and adorning royal pleasure grounds. But to believe a stroll around the countryside would have brought him, sooner or later, to a well-ordered garden containing cultivated grass is probably fanciful. Miles Hadfield, in his History of British Gardening, asserts that gardening as an aesthetic pursuit did not exist in England before the end of the 15th century. He dismisses attempts to cite the walled and trellised gardens of the Roman de la Rose illustrations, arguing that the presence of such exotics as dates, liquorice and zedoary reflects a purely Continental tradition. Energetic medievalists necessarily disagree, maintaining that, with the development of international commerce, Continental influences must have achieved a degree of penetration; and that, anyway, the division between serviceable and aesthetic is false.

  To put this argument simplistically, medieval man would have grown his apples and pears to eat or sell them, his leeks and garlic to make soup, his thyme and hyssop and sage to flavour his food and treat his ailments, his vines to make wine. And in the planting and the growing and the harvesting, he would have taken a spiritual pleasure; smiled at the blossom, breathed in the fragrance, felt the fatness of grapes in his hand; and, consciously or unconsciously, he would have found that there was a correlation between the arrangement of his garden and the degree of his pleasure.

  It is a truism to observe that the period between the Norman Conquest and the victory of Henry VII on Bosworth Field gave birth to the nation, and hazardous to offer generalizations about national psychology. On the other hand, an attempt has to be made to explain how the aspiration to create order and beauty achieved physical expression. Norman rule freed England from what had been the constant threat of invasion. But it took time for the effects of this liberation to percolate the collective consciousness. The ruling class continued to organize their demesnes on the first principle that they must be resistant to attack. Any garden ordered by the lord for his gratification had, therefore, to be contained within fortified walls. But as time went on, and notions of permanence and stability of a sorts took hold, so was born a new confidence; and, for the first time, the lord considered the possibility of enclosing his lordly dwelling within its grounds, rather than the other way round. Freed at last from the psychic claustrophobia imposed by fear of chaos, the human spirit might take wing and, recalling Eden, create a garden.

  With confidence came a mighty economic growth, which the depredations of the wars with France, the astounding population cull of the Black Death, and assorted social upheavals, merely slowed, never halted. Although the great mass of the population remained mired in the unending struggle for survival, significant numbers, inspired by the possibility of self-advancement, rose like bubbles in a dark pond to take their places among the élite. Trade with Continental Europe, particularly in wool and woven cloth, soared. Huge fortunes were made, and required managing and spending. Great men had leisure, as they always had. But now they had more idea what to do with it, though hunting, hawking and playing war games remained their chief outlets.

  With wealth came a loosening of the ropes which bound people to their protectors and the places where they were born. No longer did they feel so inclined to share their living quarters with their livestock and toil on soil which was not theirs, for the benefit of remote, grasping landlords. Nor were they
edified by the spectacle of privileged prelates and the vast army of lesser clergy feasting on the proceeds of their tithes. As the abbots and bishops and friars exchanged devotion to their vows for ever softer living, so did the reputation of their Church decline. In the great religious houses, even the humble gardinarius would have his servant, and perhaps a dovecote to cluck over, and a dog to take scraps. They were no longer sanctuaries from barbarism, but places of frequently ostentatious luxury, the maintenance of which required endless cadging and knavish tricks.

  The new-found social fluidity engendered a spiritual flowering. No longer apprehensive about what the next day might bring, nor owing obeisance to a feudal lord or vainglorious bishop, educated Tudor man looked around him. Settled in his fine house, his lands secure, with cash to spare, he wanted more from life than merely its continuation. Staring from his gabled windows out over his acres, his curiosity stirred. It was time for the first gardening book in English.

  Pleasures of the Green

  These even and uniform carpets of green velvet, seen through their countryside, which other nations have not been able to obtain for themselves, make an admirable sight. People tried vainly to imitate them in France … the lawns that grow in France are not fine

  ANTOINE JOSEPH DEZALLIER D’ARGENVILLE

  Actually, that first ‘pleasant treatise’ of Thomas Hill, published in the first year of Elizabeth’s rule, 1558, does not – except for the chronicler searching for serviceable milestones – mark the beginning of anything; and since he has nothing to say about grass beyond the observation that turfed walks provide comfort and delight for the wearied mind, he need not detain us long. The interest of the little book lies not so much in the ragbag of other people’s experience and prejudice drawn together by its energetic compiler, but – as Hadfield points out – as an indicator of a public appetite. Gardening had begun to take root in Tudor England. People wanted to know from Thomas Hill ‘how to dress, sow and set a garden; and what remedies may be had and used against such beasts, worms and flies and such like that annoy gardens’. And they existed in sufficient numbers to make it worth Hill’s time to sift through the assorted tedious teachings of ‘Palladius, Columella, Varro, Pyophanes, learned Cato and many more’, to pick out the nuggets which might be usefully applied in his damp, temperate land, and – in his own word – ‘English’ them.

  The first English writer to whom the lawnsman owes a bow of respect is Gervase Markham, whose The English Husbandman of 1613 (later refined and expanded into Cheap and Good Husbandry) made available a coherent programme of action to make best use of English earth. There is charm and sense in Markham’s counsel:

  The mixture of colours is the only delight of the eye above all others … as in the composition of a delicate woman, the grace of her cheeks is the mixture of red and white, the wonder of the eye black and white, and the beauty of her hand blue and white, any of which is not said to be beautiful if it consist of single or simple colours; and so in these walks and alleys the all green, nor the all yellow, cannot be said to be the most beautiful, but the green and the yellow (that is the untrod grass and the well-knit gravel) being equally mixed, give the eye lustre and delight beyond all comparison.

  The point is well made, in its roundabout fashion.

  Markham’s recipe for producing that green to delight the eye is none the less valid for its close resemblance to that advocated by that sound old Swabian, Albertus Magnus. Cleanse the ground of stones and weeds, destroy the roots – in how many manuals of lawn care have those arduous principles been recycled? Gervase Markham (or Albertus) was there first. Boiling water should be poured all over, he says; then the floor beaten ‘and trodden mightily’. Place ‘turfs of earth full of green grass, the bare earth turned upwards’, then ‘dance upon with the feet’ until the grass ‘may begin to peep up and put forth small hairs … until finally it is made the sporting green plot for ladies and gentlemen to recreate their spirits in’. Hats off and raised spades to Gervase Markham, for even now one could do worse! And how pleasant is the picture of those Jacobean enthusiasts capering upon their upturned turves, and reaping their reward a year or two later, as they stroll forth with their ladies across the soft grass, stopping to play chess or ‘recreate their spirits’ with some verses of Spenser.

  How extensively Markham’s advice was observed, we cannot tell. What we do know is that, by his time, it had become common for aristocrats and plutocrats to commission bowling greens in their grounds, as well as turfed and gravelled walks. By the early 17th century the game of bowls was already secure in the affections of all levels of society. Indeed, Richard II had banned it on the grounds that it was distracting the people from archery, and a Frenchman was never going to be downed by a flying bowl. The prohibition was renewed by Henry IV and Edward IV, and re-imposed by Henry VIII, who declared: ‘The game of bowls is an evil because the alleys are in operation in conjunction with saloons or dissolute places … a vicious form of gambling’. Innkeepers were threatened with a fine of two pounds for permitting the game to be played. But – perhaps because Henry himself was known to be a keen and accomplished player – little attention seems to have been paid, and bowls continued to flourish.

  In medieval times, it was generally played on flattened cinders or clay. But by 1600, grass had become the preferred surface for the nobility and gentry (although it is thought likely that Drake played his immortal game on an expanse of camomile). An elementary science of grass culture must have evolved, too; the greens must have been as flat as they could make them, and the grass as short and thick and even as they could get it. By 1670 the rules of bowls had been formalized, and a few years later Randle Holme wrote in the Academy of Armory that ‘bowling greens are open wide spaces made smooth and even … orders agreed by gentlemen bowlers that noe high heeles enter for spoiling their green, they forfeit sixpence’.

  We can only speculate whether similar standards of care were translated to the ornamental grass plot; whether the Elizabethans and Jacobeans cared if it were flat or bumpy, whether they liked flowers and herbs intermingled, how often they cut and rolled, and how. In the absence of any surviving garden of the period, we again have to rely upon the ancient texts and illustrations, in which – regrettably – the attention paid to grass and its cultivation is at best fleeting, and at worst non-existent. If we wish, we can learn a good deal about their affection for the intricacies of the knot and the maze, and the eagerness with which they seized upon the fruits of exploration and commerce – not just the potato, but cedars, laburnums, tulips, yuccas, Jerusalem artichokes, oranges, lemons, cherries and a host of new flowers and shrubs. England was more prosperous than it had ever been, and more stable – until the Civil War – than any country in Europe had ever been. Men were inspired by the questing spirit, and gardening’s experimental, organic character made it a natural outlet. Sadly but understandably, that spirit was rarely exercised by the matter of grass. There was, however, one notable exception.

  The authentic voice of late Elizabethan and early Jacobean England is that of Francis Bacon, Viscount St Albans, one of the numerous distinctions of whose life was that it was ended by a chill caught while he was stuffing a dead fowl with snow to observe the effect of cold on the preservation of flesh. It is characteristic of the elasticity of Bacon’s mind that, in the midst of half a lifetime’s unscrupulous and serpentine manoeuvrings at court – whose sole guiding principle was the promotion of his own interests – he should have published his Essays, or Counsell Civill and Morall, which amounted to a manual of spiritual and cultural self-improvement. The range of these homilies, the richness of the learning they display, and the elegance of their prose, are amazing. But equally remarkable is the tone, its authority and confidence. Whether in routing the atheists, measuring the usefulness of novelties, or analysing the fruits of friendship, this supreme know-all is immune to the very notion of uncertainty.

  Bacon’s intellectual arrogance is on magnificent display in his famous essa
y ‘Of Gardens’. In considering the garden, he does not stoop to concern himself with anything so mundane as the growing of things. His mind is on the moral dimension. The garden is, he asserts, ‘the purest of human pleasures … the greatest refreshment to the spirit of man’. ‘When ages grow to civility and elegance, men come to build stately sooner than to garden finely as if gardening were the greater perfection.’ The regulations are set out with impregnable assurance. Bacon scorns knots with ‘diverse coloured earths’ as toys. Images cut in juniper or ‘other garden stuff’ are for children. Aviaries are impermissible. Pools ‘marr all and make the garden unwholesome and full of frogs and flies’. The main garden must be square, surrounded by a ‘stately arched hedge’, with turrets above the arches to contain bird-cages. At each end of the side gardens there should be a mound, breast high; and at the centre of the whole thing, another, thirty feet high, with three ascents, each broad enough for four to walk abreast; and within the hedged alleys should be gravelled walks (not grass, which would be ‘going wet’).

  Bacon’s ideal Eden in St Albans – it’s difficult to imagine him or anyone else actually creating and maintaining such an exorbitance – covered thirty acres. There were three essential elements: at the far end, a natural wilderness devoid of trees but rampant with thickets of sweet briar and honeysuckle; in the middle, the main garden; at the entrance, the green. Here is our first true English lawn:

  The green hath two pleasures, the one, because nothing is more pleasant to the eye than green grass kept finely shorn; the other, because it will give you a fair alley in the midst, by which you may go in front upon a stately hedge which is to enclose the garden.