Trea Martyn - Elizabeth in the Garden
Kenilworth
The recreated Elizabethan garden gives an impression of the luxurious and dramatic garden made by Robert Dudley for Elizabeth I's visit of 1575. The garden will evolve over the seasons and years. As summer advances, the sparse spring planting will give way to a variety of highly scented roses and vivid French marigolds.
The planting is in its infancy, and in three years' time, the space will look very different. As the plants grow, walls made of greenery will replace trellis fences, which will be covered with privet, hawthorn and eglantine; the arbours' wooden frameworks will be entwined with musk rose, Jacobite rose and possibly vines. The orchard of saplings will flourish into a leafy haven.
The process of recreating the garden has taught English Heritage a great deal about Elizabethan gardening and planting, and visitors will be able to learn about horticultural techniques in a uniquely direct and accessible way.
The garden offers insights into Elizabethan arts and culture, for example, opening a new window on the world of Shakespeare and the poets of the Elizabethan court. The beautifully carved aviary and terrace balustrade were built by timber specialists McCurdy & Co, who recreated the Globe. McCurdy & Co were an apt choice given the theatrical nature of the garden: the garden and castle have been interpreted as an enormous performance space for entertainments for the Queen.
The panels on the eight-sided marble fountain show scenes from Ovid's Metamorphoses, featuring sea gods, a sea nymph and a dolphin, which may have reminded Elizabethans of Dudley's fabulous water pageants for Elizabeth in 1575 and which some think Shakespeare immortalised in A Midsummer Night's Dream.
The garden greatly enhances the castle, allowing visitors to see the majestic ruins in new ways. From the broad terrace, looking to the west, it is easier to picture the long-disappeared lake, which once formed a huge stage for water pageants to entertain Elizabeth. Wild yellow and red wallflowers growing on the ruined walls of the garden happily link with the newly planted wallflowers in the compartments.
English Heritage's website for Kenilworth offers information about the history of the garden, a tour of the garden and extracts from Robert Langham's letter, on which the garden is based.
Go to: www.english-heritage.org.uk/server/show/nav.18468.
Theobalds
In July 2008, Cecil's once-magnificent palace was placed on the English Heritage Buildings at Risk Register, a list of the nation's most vulnerable Grade l and Grade ll* buildings and Scheduled Ancient Monuments. Also, that July, as part of National Archaeology Week, the first archaeological dig for forty years took place at the site of Theobalds Palace.
Trenches were opened on the south side of the eighteenth-century flint follies and the remains of an ornamental canal around an island were discovered, believed to date from the time of James I or earlier.
In April 2009, Broxbourne Council was awarded development funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Big Lottery Fund's Parks for People programme to develop plans to interpret the history of Cedars Park (the site of the Palace) for all sectors of the community, opening up historic views and recreating the historic planting.
May 2009
For a full list of events at Cedars Park, please visit www.cedarspark.info