The Grass is Greener: An Anglo-Saxon Passion. Tom Fort
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 essay ‘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.
That is all. There is no hint as to how the precept is to be realized. The fount of wisdom