It occurs to me now that we have a little bit of land, that Jenn and I might try to plant a small 15th century style garden. We have a perfectly flat spot of yard, near to what was a large (now unused) clay tennis court, with a shed right next to it.

When I go looking through depictions of gardens of various sorts, they sem to be invariably raised beds, deliniated into squares or rectangles - it seems that the borders of these beds are planks or the like - and with walkways that seem to be crushed stone or shell in between the beds.

I am led to believe that the plantings themselves were what we would consider eccentric for gardens today, that is, vegetables, herbs, and flowers may all be in a single square or rectangular bed.

Could anyone shed any further light on the subject? How about some good references, both books, and online, or any links?

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This is a great little starting book on medieval Gardens.

Available from the Museum shop, but probably also from Amazon.
http://www.britishmuseum.co.uk/Product.aspx?ID=416

Happy Gardening

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Are there any garden enthusiasts out there on the board?

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Skilled, not so much.

My herb garden has never gotten beyond basil, oregano, three kinds of mint and two kinds of chives...

I did get my hands on a couple of very nice pre-1860 strains of roses though

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Most of my gardening ref's are modern but I think I've got a few somewhere that may touch on medieval practice. I'll dig around.

The mixed plantings wouldn't look at all eccentric to an organic gardener by the way, and there are a number of benefits that arrive from it:

Better use of space is one: For example, native americans often planted beans along with maize with the maize stalks acting as a natural trellis.

Another benefit is that some plants repell pests of various kinds: many browsers are put off by the scent of marigiolds so clumps of marigold in among your carots or whatever can help keep the bunnies away.

Others are planted because pest love them above all else. Nasturiums, for example, are the preferred food of aphids so if you provide a ready supply of nasturium the aphids will munch on those and ignore whatever else is around.

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Also some may well be perennial in some climates, Basil is in Asia yet is annual in Europe.

I can recommend growing sorrel, it lasts for years and are easy to propagate by breaking off some root stock and stalk. A good sharp addition to sauces.

I don't mind plants that are pretty so long as you can eat them.

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Char and I started our medieval garden experiment last year with a raised bed, about 5'x9' mixing herbs and veggies. It's nice having the herbs available, and I think the strongly-scented herbs may have kept some of the critters out of the veggies. Marigolds may work as well. Exceot for the g@#&^%^ Japanese beetles and the hy-uge saturniid moth larvae.

It's also nice having the bed elevated so it's easier to tend and harvest.

For construction, rather than buy planks, I used logs from a couple of pine trees I'd dropped. It was free and the joinery was much simpler than messing with planks or beams, but I may have the guy with the sawmill across the road make a couple of them into beams for me.

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There is no joinery with planks at all when making a raised bed - they drive pegs or wands of wood either side into the ground, in all the images where you can see how the plaks are fixed.

Thanks everybody for your replys!

Now, where to find Medieval seeds?

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Cheers
Joram

[ 02-12-2007: Message edited by: Joram van Essen ]

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Off the top of my head:
Oregano
3 types of Basil (sweet, thai and purple)
3 types of thyme (common, lemon and turkey)
Golden Marjoram
Chives
2 types of Parsley (flat and curly leafed)
Winter Savoury
Tarragon
2 types of Rosemary (prostrate and standard)
Roses (tea, bramble, standard)
Hyssop
Valerian
Lemon Balm
Lemon Verbena
Angelica
Lovage
Cardamon
Sorrel
Rocket
Chervil
Sage
5 types of Mint (apple, common, pepper, spear, eau de cologne)
Pennyroyal
Blackwort
Gypsywort
Costmary
Dandelion
Nasturtium
Cress
Curry plant
St John's Wort
Violet
Spikenard
Camomile
Madder
Tansy
a few more around the place.

Mostly I grow for cooking, with some for dyeing and brewing. I can't help with growing in ought but Australian conditions, though. The SCA here has just established a Herbalist and Gardeners' Guild to encourage research into medieval gardening, herbs and their uses.

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quote:

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Originally posted by chef de chambre:
Hi Jeff,

There is no joinery with planks at all when making a raised bed - they drive pegs or wands of wood either side into the ground, in all the images where you can see how the plaks are fixed.

Thanks everybody for your replys!

Now, where to find Medieval seeds?

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Ya, these beds are just temporary, eventually there will be a pool where the mini garden is currently located. They also have tomatoes in them...

quote:

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Originally posted by chef de chambre:
Thanks Joram!

Are there any garden enthusiasts out there on the board?

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Hi Bob,

Since I'm new to the board I'm going through the old threads and replying to things that were posted awhile ago.

My wife is a landscape designer with a special interest in historical landscaping. In addition to running her own design business, she teaches at the Landscape Institute of the Arnold Arboretum
at Tower Hill Botanic Garden in Boylston, MA http://www.towerhillbg.org/
and at the New England Wildflower Society in Framingham, MA http://www.newfs.org/

She has quite a bit of reference material on medieval gardening and knows quite a bit about heirloom varieties of plants.

She is not a member of this board, but you can get in touch with her by e-mail at Laura D. Eisener Landscape Design ldeld@primushost.com

By the way, if anyone is looking for an interesting medieval landscaping project, European ash (fraxinus excelsior)is hardy to zone 4 in New England. If you coppice it you should have perfect, authentic 18' pike shafts in about 10 years.

Best Regards,

Paul

I messed up the Harvard url, let's try again:

www.arboretum.harvard.edu

[ 01-24-2008: Message edited by: Paul Kenworthy ]

Talking about coppicing made me think about a couple of things in general about medieval landscaping.

1. Land was intensely managed; and not just the garden. Trees would frequently be coppiced, pollarded, and espaliered. Coppicing, for example, would allow you to use the same tree for firewood indefinitely. Espaliering a fruit tree would allow you to keep it in a micro-climate created, for example, by a south-facing stone wall where it would be hardy in a area that would normally not be suitable.

2. Gardens and yards would be fenced. This was not to keep things in, but rather to keep things out. This was centuries before enclosure, and farm animals frequently roamed at will. After all, they weren't going to be run over in traffic. You needed to make sure the goats and pigs and rabbits didn't get into your kitchen garden.

(My wife actually experienced this when installing an herb garden in Ogunquit, Maine many years ago. A nearby neighbor had a pig that ran loose and would come every afternoon to see what my wife was up to...to the detriment of the garden. The pig was also very friendly and would tip my wife over when she was kneeling down working.)

3. Materials used were frequently the result of the aboreculture refered to above. Coppicing doesn't produce trees suitable for sawing into planks like we are used to today. It *does* produce excellent material for wattle fencing, however. Coppice a willow and you have all the fencing material you will ever need. And wattle fences are portable on top of everything else.

4. Get a bee skep. They pollinate your fruit trees and give you honey as a bonus.

Anyway, these are just some random thoughts.

Regards,

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It's amazing how some things don't change much over time.

I was reading a book last night about cooking in the 17th-century Netherlands and it talked about how milk cows were kept. Every house would have a pen at the back with a milk cow. You would milk the cow first thing in the morning and then open the pen. The cow would walk by itself to the town common where a herder would count the cows and watch them for the day while they grazed. In the evening the cows would return to their respective homes. Anyone who has worked on a dairy farm knows that cows are creatures of habit and know when they are supposed to return to the barn. (Bulls, by the way, are a whole different story. )

This way of grazing milk cows was used throughout the middle ages and was still being used on the common in the middle of downtown Boston, Massachusett into the 1920s.

Using animals adds a distinctive dynamic to lots of activities. For example, my mother-in-law's second husband grew up in the North End of Boston in the 1920s. His father had a produce stand in Haymarket. Every morning his father would hitch his horse to the produce wagon and drive it down to Haymarket bringing his little boy with him. After he got to the market, he would unhitch the horse (who's name was Gerry), put the little boy on the horse, and the horse would return home by itself taking the child with it.

A friend of mine grew up in Germany in the 1920s. Her mother had a dog (named Usta) that would do the grocery shopping for the family. Every day the mother would put a shopping list and some money in a basket and give it to the dog who would carry it down to the grocery store. The shop keeper would put the items on the list in the basket along with the change and Usta would bring them home. The only thing you couldn't buy that way was steak!

People who live close to animals use their native intelligence to advantage.

By the way, another interesting thing about milk cows is that you can divide medieval western Europe into two general culinary traditions: warm areas where olive trees can be grown have predominantly oil-based recipes, and cold areas where olive trees don't grow have predominantly butter-based recipes.

Regards,

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Andy V.
You're friendly neighborhood Roman Dude

That was standard practice for ice and milk wagons. The horse would walk the route while the milk man/ice man ran back and forth from the curb to the front porch of the houses on the route. The horse would even pace itself slowly enough that the delivery man had time to get back and forth.

Regards,

Bob used to tell me about cavalry horses during the Civil War that recognized the various bugle calls and what they meant.

A lot of horses like routine, others get bored. Normandie is the latter. So we must keep him entertained... just like the hounds.

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George McClellan in his book about European armies talks about the dangers of letting military horse get too used to a routine. He specifically recommends the 19th-century Russian practice of feeding the light cavalry mounts at a different time each day when in stables so they don't get sick when they are on campaign because they get fed at irregular intervals.

By the way, how do your dogs get along with your horses? Some horses get very attached to dogs.

Regards,

The clause is relatively new and was due in large part to an inconsiderate former boarder who basically let her dogs run wild, so other boarders complained and thus new rule...no dogs in the barn.

If you ever go on a trail ride, the horses are so attuned to the trail guide that they watch for hand and vocals. Very amusing.

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quote:

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George McClellan in his book about European armies talks about the dangers of letting military horse get too used to a routine. He specifically recommends the 19th-century Russian practice of feeding the light cavalry mounts at a different time each day when in stables so they don't get sick when they are on campaign because they get fed at irregular intervals.

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Interesting, we vary feeding times out our barn for up to an hour for the reason that at shows, they may not be able to be fed when they think it's "time".

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About Europe being divided into butter and olive oil eaters... I think it may not be that simple... The Catalan/Spanish Corpus of recipes, for example, seems to favour pig fat and only uses olive oil sparingly, mostly for lenten or Friday versions of dishes (when no animal fats could be eaten).

Thanks for this thread - it's been very interesting. I loved the story about grocery-shopping dog, in particular.

Cheers!