Kenilworth Castle IV

The Privy [private] Garden was a Tudor-style garden built explicitly for Elizabeth I and her retinue at Kenilworth Castle. Above is the design of the garden. In large part, it was intended to be a scent garden. At the time, it would have been hedged in for privacy.



View from Leicester's Building. On the fence posts--the white Bears with Staffs--were Leicester's heraldic symbol.



Knot 3 of the garden. The front border is Armeria maritima or ‘common thrift.’ [Okay, I'm having trouble with my keyboard and can't make double quotes anymore.] Lower right is dianthus, middle right is 'sweet rocket.' In the middle of the image are beds lined with strawberries. Very fragrant. The building in the back was the Aviary.

Something I thought was a carnation but is actually called Lychnis.



Clove-scented carnations [an array of scented flowers were sometimes referred to as gilly flowers]. This was a poor-man's scent substitute for actual, expensive cloves which nobles chewed to freshen their breath. [Karen Harper features this distinction in one of her Elizabethean murder mysteries.]



The Tudor Rose.


'At the culmination of the 100 year war, later to be known as the Battle of the Roses, Henry, of Lancastrian descent, defeated Richard the III at the Battle of Bosworth field in 1485 and thus gained the throne. Soon after the families reunited when Henry married Elizabeth of York and in respect of this Henry symbolically pasted together the red and white rose, the heraldic emblem we now recognise as the Tudor Rose.'

The Privy Garden plant list.