Chapter II · OF HERBS CHIEFLY USED IN THE PAST (continued 2)
Reading edition
Wife, unto thy garden and set me a plot, With strawberry rootes of the best to be got. Such growing abroade, among thorns in the wood, Wel chosen and picked proove excellent food. September’s Husbandry.—Tusser.
Miss Amherst says that in the Hampton Court Accounts there are “several entries of money paid for strawberry roots, brought from the wood to the King’s garden.” The fact that this is no longer the custom, may explain the disappointment that some have experienced, who, in the hope of enjoying “the most excellent cordial smell” described by Sir Francis Bacon, have haunted their kitchen gardens when the strawberry leaves are dying, and without reward. The strawberries grown there at present are not, as in his day, natives, subjected to civilisation, but are chiefly of American or Asiatic origin (the first foreign strawberry cultivated in England was Fragaria virginiana, and was introduced from North America in 1629; four years after the Essay on Gardens was first published), and if their leaves have any fragrance, it must be of the faintest possible description. Anyone, however, who passes through a wood, towards evening, especially if it is a mild and slightly damp day in October, may speedily realise how true and admirable was this counsel given by the Great Lord Chancellor.
THE ARMS OF SAFFRON WALDEN.