[The Basics and the Devoted Twists of the European Medieval Gardens] Script

Hello everyone! This is J. J. Bartel, Author, Botanist, Historian, and gamer, and I cultivated some greatness into a short story … sort of. However, it needs some more time, so I am sharing some of my research on medieval gardening and its four key aspects with a devout twist. This time it’s The Medieval European Garden.

(Intro) 

So in medieval Europe, especially in Britain, gardens were important. Back then, there was no fridge or freezer, and starving was easy. Every calorie was a death battle compared to our modern times. It was essential to obtain multiple sources of food. The farms were for wheat and other grains for bread, a staple source of carbs, easy to digest energy. The main point of the garden was for growing other food, like root veggies, beans, peas, bramble berries, and the occasional fruit tree. This was a key source of vitamins, nutrients, minerals, and flavor. The poor would have the least amount of land, which complicated life. A large bush or big tree could be a curse, blessing, and real gamble. Growing a tree or bush might give you more food, but you can only grow a few things near a tree; otherwise, the mustard or mint would compete with the larger plant for nutrients. Your betting that the tree or bush produces enough food year to year that you can afford not to grow no food near it. Root and stem crops that grew near the ground, like parsnips, carrots, turnips, beets, and even rutabagas, were favored. They tended to be cheaper to purchase seeds for because the food was close to the ground. Keep that in mind. 

They would range from cottage core-esque plots, with some parsnips here, some beans there, peas over there climbing the fence, a chaotic haphazard mess of various plants. Conversely, some gardens were more orderly, with lines of root, leaf, and stem crops being grown. In some cases, the raised bed would be employed for crops grown in small quantities. People would grow the plants to eat most and leave some to seed, with families and households growing generations of their seed. In periods of starvation, families would be forced to eat their seeds and then work for another family more fortunate to try to buy back their livelihood. Unless given seeds of other crops or crop varieties, the grandparents would eat the same food as the grandkids for generations. Beauty was a luxury that not all could afford. One could grow flowers on the outskirts of the garden’s border. A poor fool would grow non-edible flowers in the garden. Even though these flowers served a purpose, they would be dried to be made into products like soap or medicine or to support local honey production. The inside of the garden was to grow as much food as possible. Not always, but for most medieval poor-growing gardens, it was similar to modern-day disaster preppers. The mentality was, “If I cannot eat it, I am not growing it.”

Those “Middle Class” folk with more money and land than the poor would take a different approach. I say middle class in quotes because there were many classes of people in the medieval ages, especially in Great Brittian and Ireland, but we care about parsnips and carrots, not politics and class. Hence the rough general grouping. Land and money went hand in hand. Some would have double the land of the average poor, while some could have far more. The gardens would naturally be more extensive, with the lower “middle class” focusing on roots and tubers, while wealthier members could focus on stem and leaf crops like lettuce and celery. More bushes like elderberries, brambles like raspberries, and trees like crabapples could be used, but sparingly. Most would be food, but the upper middle class could afford to give up some space for more decorative trees. Flowers could also occupy more of the garden, and some flowers could be purely for decoration. 

While some families grew the plants, they were more likely to have servants or helpers from a local settlement manage the land. Traveling merchants would also sell seeds, perhaps saplings of crops from other lands. A well-traveled merchant during this time would travel between the southernmost coast of Brittian and France or from southern Britain to the Scottish border. These seeds would be traded from modern-day regions like Ireland, France, Denmark, and Germany or Scandinavian regions like the coasts of Norway, Finland, and Sweden. From Great-grandpa to great-grandson, the diet might include one or two three new plants to eat and could slowly change from generation to generation. This “middle class” of medieval people would include land owners, some clergy, less affluent merchants, and the like, and what you did would affect what one focused on growing. General land owners would focus on growing local specialties, food, or wealthier industries like fruit trees, bramble berries, or honey for mead. Food and medicine for animals like chickens, pigs, goats, and the like would also be necessary. Merchants would focus on more artistic, pleasant gardens to entertain guests or future business partners. They would have a small area filled with flowers. Clergy would experiment and see if they could develop new varieties of food for their congregation to grow. They would also be the ones that experimented with wild herbs to see if they could make better medicinal tinctures, tonics, poultices, and the like. Keep this in mind for later. The middle class of medieval gardeners was much like the traditionalist casual gardeners of our time. The food or flower gardeners grow the same plants year after year and may vary the variety on occasion. The motto is, “It is what I like, what I know, so it is what I do.” Also called the farmer motto. I kid, I kid.     

Now we get the rich of rich. This is the top 10% of society, the upper class with the most land and money. Very few roots and tubers would be grown. The focus would be on luxuries. Since they have the space, they would grow bigger plants like bushes and trees and grow far more of them. A massive plot of raspberries or fruit orchards was showing off your wealth like a Mazarati or a mansion would today. If they focused on food, they would try to grow exotic food for their region or food for their animals like chickens, ducks, geese, swans, cows, sheep, and the like. Notice the focus on birds. Remember that for later. 

Growing bushes for ornamental uses or pruning trees into shapes also was something that could be done. The use of flowers as lavish gardens, especially the rose, helped to make the rose garden. While the middle class could grow roses, the upper class could only maintain full rose-only gardens. While the middle class growing roses would harvest the precious few flowers for rose water or the rose hips, the rich could afford to grow the roses for beauty alone, styling the walkways, paths, trellises, and canopies into living works of art. When traveling merchants came around, these people could buy the most exotic foods and seeds and eat any loss. Whatever the middle class could do, the rich could do on a whole other level. Money is no object.     

Now I do hope that you kept in mind that the low class focused on root veggies, the clergy would experiment on plants, and the rich had a focus on meat, especially birds. This is because a few things determine the essence of a medieval European garden. To make or grow your medieval garden, these four things must be worked with. The first is the region. Many climates and landscapes occur only in Europe. Questions like when are spring, when does the snowfall, what kind of soil you have, whether the land is hilly or flat, climate and landscape, and the local ecosystem will dictate what kind of food can be grown. Oranges of southern Portugal are not surviving in northern Scotland. Whatever grows in Brittian and Ireland has to stomach the snow, the rain, and the dreary days. That is self-explanatory, much like the second thing, the plants. Many roses need to overwinter, and they would not survive the tropics. Many tubers and root crops like beets, carrots, and the like are bi-annual. They grow to overwinter the first year, then grow more to seed and wither away in the second year. Suppose the winter is not cold enough; the plant will not seed properly. Get the right plant for the right region. There are beans that best thrive in Ireland. Some best thrive in Germany, others in the Deutschlands. So we have the region, and we have plants. We spent so much time on how money changes the garden. What was foreshadowed is the final thing that alters and separates the medieval garden. Christianity. 

It is the medieval times in Europe; figure Christianity will change things. It did influence the garden at every level. Many clergies of medieval times were the scientists of the time. Indeed, there were alchemists, and the rich occasionally dabbled in exploring and research. However, as far as biology is concerned, the clerics, pastors, monks, and religious folk could read the Bible and books on farming. They copied scripture from Genesis to Revelation and texts on breeding cattle, sheep, pigs, horses, chickens, and the like. They wrote down techniques that worked and sent such letters to other monasteries. They were most likely to cross different plant species to make a new plant or variety. The monks spread new parsnip, turnip, bean, and more varieties to the local poor so that they could feed themselves.  

Christianity influenced the “middle class” of Europe. In the Bible, there is a part of it called genesis. That book contains the story of how Christians believe God made the world. God made paradise, and adam and eve, the first people made, were to keep and work it. Everything was perfect until the first people, adam and eve, broke the rules and got kicked out of paradise. Their flaws and sins are why the world has evil today, things like thorns and thistles sprouting out of the ground. For a medieval person, paradise was a garden without weeds. It fed you, and you did not need to weed it. What was tending to paradise when the world was not evil? If you were not pulling weeds, you were enjoying the plants, smelling the flowers, and relaxing in the day’s breeze. For the medieval person, God’s command to work the garden is akin to a parent walking their kids into Disneyland or Legoland today and saying, “have fun. Explore and go on any ride you want, eat anything and everything, except for that one place you are allergic to.” Also, Genesis describes what is outside of paradise called wilderness. This is what Cain is banished to for murdering his brother. There is no order, only chaos. It is wild with every manner of thorn, thistle, and weed. For a medieval person, the natural world was dangerous due to sin, to evil. It was unorderly, unmanaged, and home to bears, wolves, and other predators. A garden would not look like the sin-tainted natural world. Because of the scriptures, an orderly garden was to recreate paradise. 

To have a circle of bush beans, outline the border with flowers, a line of crops or a square of celery is to remake the garden of Eden, the paradise. Some would take the perfect circles, even shapes, and geometrical symmetry to another level. The more devout layman or pastor would be inclined to try to tell a sermon with their garden. The flowers might bloom to form crosses, crops and flowers of the saints would be grown, and putting a chair or a bench in the garden for praying was common. Growing plants that were found in the garden was an aspiration. 

The prosperous “upper class” would naturally take this Christianity in gardening to the next level. However, the very rich also had a darker element of gardens developed. Roses were often grown and donated to the clergy so that they always had something beautiful to decorate the altar in the church. However, making a wall of living roses had the benefit of being pleasant to the eyes and nose, and the thorns discouraged people from walking through them. They were pretty and private places. So it became common for unmarried women to go into a rose garden waiting for suitors. There they could have a romantic spot to be wooed by a man. A lad and lass in a rose garden had romantic implications, maybe a confession or even stealing a kiss. 

Between the medieval Christian mindset elevating a good garden as a religious act and a flower garden as significant for romance, it permeated the common culture of the time. In America, we have such a strong gun culture that phrases like, “Do not go off half-cocked, keep your powder dry, bite the bullet, bullseye, shoot your shot, and missed the mark” are used by people that have never held or fired a gun in their life. Even those that did not garden knew that “he went to the garden” was a euphemism for someone that dyed. “He just tends the garden now.” refers to someone that has retired. “He has not pruned his weeds” refers to how he still has his personality flaws. A woman’s rose garden is where a woman grows a child. A woman’s “new flower in the garden” referred to pregnancy. Trust me. I am picking the tamer metaphors. They get crazy fast.

Nevertheless, that is the basics of medieval gardens. They were influenced by four key things, region, plant, money, and Christianity. When these forces combined, they were so powerful that they, in turn, influenced medieval people. Another video could include more details, but this is a good start for the basics.

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