Tudor Plants
Ardeners during Henry VIIl's reign had much the same range of plants as their ancestors, though they used them in different ways to make fashionable features, such as knot gardens. But now a few foreign plants were starting to come into the country.
Flowers
Highly scented flowers, such as lilies, jasmine, carnations and pinks, remained popular throughout Tudor times. Carnations and pinks were sometimes grown in pots and stood in troughs outside windows. Aromatic evergreen herbs were the favourite plants for making knot gardens; the air-freshening effect in the bedchambers that overlooked them was welcome as plumbing was still medieval. New arrivals included antirrhinum (known as 'broad calf's snout'), winter cherry, which came over from Turkey, and French marigold Tagetes patula (known as velvet flower') which arrived from Mexico. A big influx of Huguenots arrived from the Low Countries from 1540 onwards, fleeing religious e persecution. They settled mainly in East Anglia, and among them were talented gardeners who brought with them new skills and new plants. They were responsible for the arrival of cultivated hybrids of narcissi, hyacinths, roses and pinks, when previously all we'd had were wild species. These new arrivals and their plants were the origins of 'florists', who rose to fame in the seventeenth century as breeders and exhibitors of collector's flowers.
Fruit and vegetables
Always well known for his healthy appetite, Henry Vlll was very keen on fruit, wich was cooked in a variety of ways but rarely eaten raw in tudor times for fear of dysentery.
Since the choice available in England at the time was fairly poor, the King sent his head fruiterer, Richard Harris, over to France to bring back some new varieties. In 1533 he established a 100-acre fruit garden at Teynham, near what is now Sittingbourne in Kent. It was described as the cherry garden and the apple orchard of Kent, from which Kent took its name as the 'Garden of England'. Grafting made it possible to propagate the new varieties reasonably rapidly, and soon more orchards were being planted throughout the northern half of the county. Trained fruit trees also became popular for growing on walls and over bowers in gardens. Henry had strawberries grown for the table at Hampton Court, and apricot trees were brought back from mainland Europe especially for his new garden at Nonsuch. At first they were known as 'hasty peaches' because they ripened earlier than the real thing. Vegetables began to come back into fashion during Henrys reign. Although we tend to think of him as a roast-meat man, wading into swan drumsticks at banquets, it was he who first introduced the idea of eating vegetables with meat instead of as a separate course.Broad beans had by now been introduced, and cucumbers had been reintroduced-they'd originally come to Britain with the Romans bu being frost-tende had soon died out again. Henry was keen on cuCumbers (which may have been something to do with rarity value) and plants were grown specially tor him all year round in greenhouses heated by hotbeds of fermenting manure. Since glass couldn't be made in greenhouse-sized sheets. at the time, Henry's 'glasshouses' were most likely glazed with mica - a technique thought up by the Romans- but, even so, this was very much a rich man's hobby. Vegetable-growers among the newly arrived Huguenot refugees settled around London and set up thriving market gardens supplying the now-expanding city.
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