and crushed, are three; that is, burnet,[1] wild-thyme,[2] and watermints. 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[3] 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[4] side; and twelve to the main garden. The green hath two pleasures: the
- ↑ Burnet. The popular name of plants belonging to the genera Sanguisorba and Poterium, of the Rosaceae, of which the Great or Common Burnet (Sanguisorba Offlcinalis) is common, in England, on the meadows, and the Lesser or Salad Burnet (Poterium Sanguisorba) on the chalk. The Salad Burnet received its generic name from the fact that its leaves, which taste somewhat like cucumber, were formerly dropped into goblets of wine to flavor it before drinking.
"That even mead, that erst brought sweetly forth
The freckled cowslip, burnet, and green clover,
Wanting the scythe, all uncorrected, rank,
Conceives by idleness, and nothing teems
But hateful docks, rough thistles, kecksies, burs,
Losing both beauty and utility."
Shakspere. King Henry V. v. 1.
- ↑ Wild-thyme. Thymus Serpyllum, Creeping Thyme, an inconspicuous plant, of the mint family, with flat green leaves and whitish or purplish flowers crowded at the ends of the branches, leaves and flowers both small. It is found growing in tufts on sunny hedgebanks, or in old fields.
"I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows;
Quite over-canopied with lush woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine."
Shakspere. A Midsummer-Night's Dream. ii. 1.
- ↑ Heath. A part of a garden left more or less in a wild state; now called a 'wilderness.'
- ↑ Either. Each.
