In adding another book to the enormous number of works on Shakespeare, I beg indulgence for a few words of explanation.

Having been for many years an ardent and a devoted student of Shakespeare, I discovered long ago that there was no adequate book on the Elizabethan garden and the condition of horticulture in Shakespeare's time. Every Shakespeare student knows how frequently and with what subtle appreciation Shakespeare speaks of flowers. Shakespeare loved all the simple blossoms that "paint the meadows with delight": he loved the mossy banks in the forest carpeted with wild thyme and "nodding violets" and o'er-canopied with eglantine and honey-suckle; he loved the cowslips in their gold coats spotted with rubies, "the azured harebells" and the "daffodils that come before the swallow dares"; he loved the "winking mary-buds," or marigolds, that "ope their golden eyes" in the first beams of the morning sun; he loved the stately flowers of stately gardens the delicious musk-rose, "lilies of all kinds," and the flower-de-luce; and he loved all thenew "outlandish" flowers, such as the crown-imperial just introduced from Constantinople and "lark's heels trim" from the West Indies.

Shakespeare no doubt visited Master Tuggie's garden at Westminster, in which Ralph Tuggie and later his widow, "Mistress Tuggie," specialized in carnations and gilliflowers, and the gardens of Gerard, Parkinson, Lord Zouche, and Lord Burleigh. In addition to these, he knew the gardens of the fine estates in Warwickshire and the simple cottage gardens, such as charm the American visitor in rural England. When Shakespeare calls for a garden scene, as he does in "Twelfth Night," "Romeo and Juliet," and "King Richard II," it is the "stately garden" that he has in his mind's eye, the finest type of a Tudor garden, with terraces, "knots," and arbors. In "Love's Labour's Lost" is mentioned the "curious knotted garden."

Realizing the importance of reproducing an accurate representation of the garden of Shakespeare's time the authorities at Stratford-upon-Avon have recently rearranged "the garden" of Shakespeare's birthplace; and the flowers of each season succeed each other in the proper "knots" and in the true Elizabethan atmosphere. Of recent years it has been a fad among American garden lovers to set apart a little space for a "Shakespeare garden," where a few old-fashioned English flowers are planted in beds of somewhat formal arrangement. These gardens are not, however, by any means replicas of the simple garden of Shakespeare's time, or of the stately garden as worked out by the skillful Elizabethans.

It is my hope, therefore, that this book will help those who desire a perfect Shakespeare garden, besides giving Shakespeare lovers a new idea of the gardens and flowers of Shakespeare's time.

From the Preface