Use of Bosquets: The Garden of Euphues

Beyond these alleys on either side there must be room for `diversity of side alleys' which shows that the use of bosquets on either flank of the principal garden was known in England as well as in France long before Le Notre was born. In fact, the French vista garden is here in embryo for Bacon insists that the hedged alleys must not be continued at either end of the main garden, but a gap left so that a view can be had from the home lawn into the garden proper and from the garden proper on into the third of his divisions. But though each garden is to provide a view into the next the notion of one vista linking them all is not yet present... we are to be encouraged forward step by step, not rushed along a corridor. The obstacle to our continuous vista is a typically medieval one... `I wish also in the very middle a fair mount, with three ascents and alleys, enough for four to walk abreast; which I would have to be perfect circles, without any bulwarks or embossments; and the whole mount to be thirty foot high; and some fine banqueting house, with some chimneys neatly cast, and without too much glass.' A further link with the castle gardens of the Middle Ages is at the side of the flanking bosquets where Bacon requires the earth to be raised against the wall so that one can see over the top into the fields. The third division is to be wild garden. There are to be no trees, but thickets of sweetbrier and honeysuckle, and the ground is to be planted with violets, straw-berries and primroses without order exactly as they occur in nature. There are to be imitation mole-hills planted with wild thyme, pinks, germander, periwinkle... It is not certain whether there are any precedents for this wild garden of Bacon's.