comes and goes, like the warbling of music) than in the hand, therefore
nothing is more fit for that delight than to know what be the flowers
and plants that do best perfume the air. Roses, damask and red, are fast
flowers of their smells, so that you may walk by a whole row of them,
and find nothing of their sweetness; yea, though it be in a morning’s
dew. Bays, likewise, yield no smell as they grow; rosemary little, nor
sweet marjoram; that which above all others yields the sweetest smell in
the air is the violet, which comes twice a year, about the middle of
April, and about Bartholomew-tide. Next to that is the musk rose; then
the strawberry leaves dying, with a most excellent cordial smell; then
the flower of the vines—it is a little dust, like the dust of a bent,
which grows upon the cluster in the first coming forth; then
sweet-brier, then wall-flowers, which are very delightful to be set
under a parlor or lower chamber window; then pinks and gilliflowers,
especially the matted pink and clove gilliflowers; then the
honeysuckles, so that they be somewhat afar off. Of bean-flowers I speak
not, because they are field-flowers; but those which perfume the air
most delightfully, not passed by as the rest, but being trodden upon and
crushed, are three, that is, burnet, wild thyme, and water-mints;
therefore you are to set whole alleys of them, to have the pleasure when
you walk or tread.
For gardens (speaking of those which are indeed prince-like, as we have
done of buildings), the contents ought not well to be under thirty acres
of ground, and to be divided into three parts: a green in the entrance,
a heath or desert in the going forth, and the main garden in the midst,
besides alleys on both sides; and I like well that four acres of ground
be assigned to the green, six to the heath, four and four to either
side, and twelve to the main garden. 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
inclose the garden; but because the alley will be long, and, in great
heat of the year, or day, you ought not to leave the shade in the garden
by going in the sun through the green, therefore you are, of either side
the green, to plant a covert alley upon carpenter’s work, about twelve
foot in height, by which you may go in shade into the garden. As for the
making of knots or figures with divers colored earths, that they may lie
under the windows of the house on that side which the garden stands,
they be but toys; you may see as good sights many times in tarts.