Medieval garden

Medieval gardens in Europe were widespread, but our very incomplete knowledge of them is better for those of elites than the common people, who probably mostly grew for food and medicine. The range of ornamental plants available was far narrower than in later periods. The term ‘garden’ refers to the ‘garth’, or enclosure, required around areas valued for their contents or their privacy. Every early garden manual starts with advice on how to form its defence, either by water, hedge or wall; elites wanted to have walled gardens. The skills required by gardeners, who tended to be better paid than other manual workers, included those of vineyard attendants, fruiterers, herb gardeners or makers of arbours.^[1]

The cultures which settled in the Roman Empire north of the Alps in the Age of Migrations appear to have had little tradition of gardening, but there was probably some continuity with sophisticated Roman gardening south of the Alps and in Romanized populations, such as the Gallo-Roman areas in southern France. In this context monastic gardens were important, especially in the Early Middle Ages,^[2] but are not covered here.

The gardens of the Middle Ages treated below also exclude the Islamic garden traditions of the Umayyad Caliphate, which by 714 had conquered all of the Iberian peninsula except the northern coast, and the ensuing Caliphate of Cordoba. Cordoba itself was prominent in the Islamic Golden Age, and Christian Europe owed much in science, medicine and botany to exchanges in times of peace. Muslim rule in Spain was not fully extinguished until 1492.^[3] Sicily too fell under Arab control until the Norman County of Sicily was established in 1071.

The Christian world included most of the territory of Europe, with its many languages and cultures, and yet the authority of the Pope, the multinational organisation of the religious houses and the dynastic links between the many ruling houses bound it together, despite the frequent squabbles, so that the culture of gardens was a largely shared tradition over the period. There have been numerous attempts over the last century to recreate them,^[4] but "no medieval garden survives in anything remotely like original form".^[5] Naturally the climatic differences between northern parts of Europe and Mediterranean areas dictated many differences,^[6] but from the 10th century until about 1300 at least, Europe enjoyed the Medieval Warm Period, which helped with some tender plants in northern areas.^[7]