She also has an orchard, with several trees – probably apples and pears, and perhaps medlars and cherries. Even a smaller plot might have at least one or two fruit trees. Susanna, of somewhat lower standing, has a small area of orchard at the far end of the main garden:

…There was a bench under the fruit trees where they might sit. … The pear tree … was covered with white blossom, and its branches hung low around them. They pulled the blossom to their noses and sniffed in the sweet, fruity scent. Chapter 6

Herbs were also grown, and I think most peasant housewives would have understood both the value of herbs as taste-bringers to their food, as well as their properties as simple everyday remedies. A medieval gardening book (see * below) says:

“A syrup of violets is a good remedy against the pleurisy and cough, and also fevers or agues, especially in young children. Apply the petals of Saint Mary’s Gold (marigold) to painful stings to soothe them… Wormwood is a bitter herb…that cures the stomach ache and a constipation of the bowel… It also repels fleas…”

On many peasant patches, a few flowers might be grown, amongst or around the vegetables and herbs, in the manner of what we call “cottage gardens” now.

But, in the larger plots of wealthier gardeners – such as that of Meonbridge’s “lord” of the manor, Lady Margaret de Bohun – there would be a “vegetable garden” (a potager), a “herb garden”, a “flower garden”, and an orchard, divided into “rooms” as we would now say… Keeping flowers and vegetables separate was apparently an ideal, according to the gardening book:

“Have two gardens, one for flowers and one for porray… Not that the flower garden can have no herbs and the potager no flowers, but keep them separate for the most part, else your flowers may be affronted if you intermingle them with onions and leeks…” *

Her ladyship’s passion for gardening is significant in the storyline of Squire’s Hazard. Her enormous garden is certainly divided into “rooms”:

…they entered the great potager, burgeoning with vegetables on every side: onion spikes, great spheres of cabbage and the frothy tops of carrots. Passing the gate that led to the herbier and flower gardens, they continued along the grassy path towards the orchard.  Chapter 26

But, sadly for her, Margaret has given up working in the potager, simply because her body is “less forgiving than it once was”. She’s decided to leave the labour of growing vegetables to her team of gardeners but refuses to give up the pleasure of being amongst her flowers.

It was such a beautiful morning; Margaret could not resist putting on her hessian apron and heavy gloves and going down to her rose garden. The snowdrops were long gone but violets and primroses should still be abundant, carpeting the ground beneath the still bare-stemmed roses. The blue irises she loved so much would also be pushing through and might even be in bloom. …

Collecting her tools and wheelbarrow from the little wooden shed just inside the entrance to the gardens from the bailey, she trudged happily along the paths that criss-crossed the grand potager and herbier to the flowery gardens beyond. The gardeners had made a good start on tilling the soil in readiness for the cabbages and colewort, turnips, beets and fennel. The onions they had sown last month were already nudging through. Chapter 9

Margaret’s rose garden is in a special area of her flower garden:

…one of her favourite parts, her “inner sanctum”… Chapter 9

This inner sanctum is based upon the concept of the “paradise garden”, which alludes to the hortus conclusus, meaning “enclosed garden”. The medieval idea of the enclosed garden is related to the worship of the Virgin Mary, and is mentioned in medieval poetry and depicted in painting and manuscript illuminations from about the middle of the fourteenth century. It became popular as a theme in garden design. I’m not ascribing any religious sentiment to Margaret’s garden, but rather using it to illustrate that wealthier people could afford to make gardens that are essentially for pleasure.

“Pleasure gardens are devised for the satisfaction of both sight and smell…so, around the lawn should be planted every sweet-smelling herb, such as rue and sage and basil, and all sorts of flowers, such as violet and columbine, lily, rose and iris.”

“In the middle of the garden there should be a meadow, the grass deep green, spangled with a thousand different flowers, violets and periwinkles, primroses and daisies… And also, perhaps, a clear fountain in a stone basin in the centre of the lawn, for the pureness of the water gives great refreshment...” *

Some gardens became quite elaborate and I’ve allowed Margaret such a flight of fancy, giving her little enclosed garden a sense of mystery and privacy:

…a circular tunnel trellis, profuse in summer with a heady mix of honeysuckle and roses, with a little enclosed herbier half way round with a fountain and a seat. Chapter 9

The honeysuckle and roses of course have to be kept in check:

Starting inside the tunnel, she secured a dozen shoots to the willow trellis. But several whippy shoots were growing on the outside and out of reach, and she walked round onto the burgeoning bed. She edged carefully between the thorny rose stems and the sturdy leaves of sprouting irises and mats of pale yellow primroses, but she soon wished she had left the errant honeysuckle to its own devices. For her skirts kept snagging on the spiky thorns and it was tricky to avoid crushing the iris tubers underfoot, as she tried to disentangle the fabric. Chapter 9

I won’t spoil the story, but those “whippy shoots” and “thorny stems” give poor Lady Margaret considerable bother…

CAROLYN HUGHES has lived most of her life in Hampshire. With a first degree in Classics and English, she started working life as a computer programmer, then a very new profession. But it was technical authoring that later proved her vocation, as she wrote and edited material, some fascinating, some dull, for an array of different clients, including banks, an international hotel group and medical instruments manufacturers.

Having written creatively for most of her adult life, it was not until her children flew the nest several years ago that writing historical fiction took centre stage, alongside gaining a Master’s degree in Creative Writing from Portsmouth University and a PhD from the University of Southampton.

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