Elizabethan Era Research Paper

Aspects of Elizabethan Gardening and Landscape Architecture

The reign of Elizabeth I was a golden era in English history, a time which abounded in men of genius. Among the many branches of art, science, and economy, to which they turned their attention, none profited more from the power of their wits, than did the art of gardening. Not having shared her father’s personality, nor his desire to not let the people live in more beautiful surroundings than his own, Elizabeth encouraged this art and persuaded her subjects to build delightfully-complex and extravagant gardens by proposing visits. The queen and her retinue would travel across the country and award the proprietors of the gardens she particularly liked. She also encouraged noblemen to support researchers, writers and other great minds who
Lord Burghley was the patron of John Gerard, a remarkable English herbalist who published a list of rare plants cultivated in his garden at Holborn, still extant in the British Museum, and the famous work Great Herball, or Generall Historie of Plantes. To Sir Walter Raleigh, a notable poet and aristocrat of the time, we owe the introduction of tobacco and of our most useful vegetable, the potato. An age of navigation and exploring, the Elizabethan era prided itself with the culture of various new flowers and plants (many of which were medicinal herbs) brought from India, America, the Canary Islands and other newly-discovered parts of the world. While re-editing Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles, in 1587, William Harrison states that he has seen over four hundred new species of plants entrusted to British soil and that, day by day, the people begin to think of them as belonging to their country. Lord Salisbury, Lord Burleigh’s son, commissioned a family of highly-skilled and educated Dutch gardeners (the Tradescants) to travel and bring back for his garden