Tudor Garden: The Garden of Euphues

The third remarkable feature of the Tudor garden was the railed bed with its posts painted in green and white. Railed beds were a common feature of fifteenth-century gardens throughout northern Europe, and no doubt arose from the practical necessity of protecting flower beds from careless pedestrians, horsemen, and straying animals. The railings at Hampton Court were not an innovation, but rather an old feature in decay. They have attracted undue attention because bills concerning the supply of them have been preserved and also because there are pictures at Hampton Court showing them in position. They were too low and flimsy to be of real use; they were ornamental, like the King's beasts which, carved in wood and bearing flags, sat on the top of highly coloured posts at regular intervals throughout the gardens. The descendants of railed beds are still with us in the arched wires that are often used to protect the borders of public parks. At first it may seem difficult to distinguish in these early English gardens any consistent national characteristic, and yet if we are right that gardening is a singularly revealing art even at the outset something peculiarly English should appear. Probably the most important and most characteristic feature is a negative one. The French quickly mastered the notion of composing their great gardens as drawing-board unities, a mastery which arises from what is generally called `the logic of the Gallic mind', although it is not perhaps logical to oversimplify a problem and force it into a geometrical strait jacket.