The Queen's Garden at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
By: Carol MatthewsThe Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, began in 1759 and are now famous the world over. Of all the plants growing on our planet, one in eight of these are also grown at Kew. The gardens are located on the south bank of the River Thames near Richmond, about 10 km south-west of London, and include various types of gardens, glasshouses, and historic buildings. These are known as 'Royal' gardens because the property was both owned and lived on by kings or members of the royal family at one time in their history.
Each individual garden at Kew is worthy of note. The first I want to share with you is the Queen's Garden located behind Kew Palace. Originally built by a merchant of Dutch origin, the palace was first known as "The Dutch House". Since then Kew Palace had been a popular royal residence from time to time since 1728. King George III and his wife Queen Charlotte made it their family home in the late 1700s. Queen Victoria agreed to Kew's acquisition of the Palace in 1896. Despite all this history, the Queen's garden was not created until the 1960s!
The garden was designed in 17th century style to match the palace, and contains only plants grown in Britain before or during that time. The reigning feature of the garden is the parterre (an ornamental flower garden with beds and paths arranged to form a pattern) which surrounds a rectangular pond. Low hedges of boxwood (Buxus sempervirens "Suffruticosa") encompass plantings of lavender (Lavandula angustifolia "Hidcote"), sage (Salvia officinalis), Santolina chamaecyparissus, and rosemary (Rosemarinus officinalis). In the centre of the pond is a statue (copy) of Verrochio's "Boy with a Dolphin". Enclosing the whole parterre is a tall hedge of yew (Taxus baccata) providing complete privacy.
Outside the parterre on one side is a sunken nosegay garden, where numerous beds are defined by stone pathways and filled with herbs and flowers that provide fragrance in their blossoms or leaves. The plants were used to fashion little bouquets in which the Lords and Ladies could bury their noses while travelling through the smelly city, and to combat the 'bad air' that was thought to carry the plague. Plants used in nosegays included such herbs as sage, bergamot, artemesia, and verbena, and blooms of the cornflower, lavender, and rose. For a complete fragrance escape there is a resting spot with a seat of chamomile and a back of boxwood. On the other side of the parterre is a double row of more than a dozen hornbeam trees (Carpinus betulus) with smooth grey trunks and branches pruned to a square awning. This was a French concept known as a boscage (raised hedge), and allowed ladies to walk this avenue in the heat of the day in the shade of its cool leafy canopy. The boscage leads to "The Mound", a small hill on which sits a wrought iron rotunda. A common feature at the homes of manor lords, it allowed them to survey their land holdings each evening.
Every plant in a seventeenth century garden was grown for a reason. The primary reason was for their medicinal qualities, followed by culinary qualities and lastly for their ornamental qualities. Each plant in the Queen's garden is labelled differently than others at Kew, the label includes the contemporary botanical name and family; its common name in the seventeenth century; and its virtue or quotation from an herbal almanac or book.
This is definitely a garden worth visiting, both for its history and its beauty. Be sure to take the time to smell the flowers!
