Contents - BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD - INDEX TO CHAPTERS - INDEX TO BIBLIOGRAPHIES - INDEX TO AUTHORS

The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
Volume IV. Prose and Poetry: Sir Thomas North to Michael Drayton.

XIV. Some Political and Social Aspects of the Later Elizabethan and Earlier Stewart Period

§ 17. Horticulture

The greatest charm of an English house, its garden, might almost be described as an Elizabethan addition to English domestic life: previously to this period, private horticulture had chiefly directed itself to the production of kitchen vegetables and medicinal herbs. Flowers were now coming to be much prized, and the love of them and care for them displayed by several Elizabethan dramatists, and, pre-eminently, by Shakespeare, was, no doubt, fostered by a desire to gratify a widespread popular taste.