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Type of themed garden

A Shakespeare garden is a themed garden that cultivates some or all of the 175 plants mentioned in the works of William Shakespeare. In English speaking countries, particularly the United States, these are often public gardens associated with parks, universities, and Shakespeare festivals. Shakespeare gardens are sites of cultural, educational, and romantic interest and can be locations for outdoor weddings. Signs near the plants usually provide relevant quotations. A Shakespeare garden usually includes several dozen species, either in herbaceous profusion or in a geometric layout with boxwood dividers. Typical amenities are walkways and benches and a weather resistant bust of Shakespeare. Shakespeare gardens may accompany reproductions of Elizabethan architecture. Some Shakespeare gardens also grow species typical of the Elizabethan period but not mentioned in Shakespeare's plays or poetry.

In January or February 1631 Sir Thomas Temple, 1st Baronet, of Stowe, was eager to send his man for cuttings from the grapevines at New Place, Stratford, the home of Shakespeare's retirement. Temple's surviving letter, however, makes no note of a Shakespeare connection: he knew the goodness of the vines from his sister in law, whose house was nearby. The revival of interest in the flowers mentioned in Shakespeare's plays arose with the revival of flower gardening in the United Kingdom. An early document is Paul Jerrard, Flowers from Stratford on Avon (London 1852), in which Jerrard attempted to identify Shakespeare's floral references, in a purely literary and botanical exercise, such as those by J. Harvey Bloom (Shakespeare's Garden London:Methuen, 1903) or F. G. Savage, (The Flora and Folk Lore of Shakespeare Cheltenham:E. J. Burrow, 1923). This parallel industry continues today. A small arboretum of some forty trees mentioned by Shakespeare was planted in 1988 to complement the garden of Anne Hathaway's Cottage in Shottery, a mile from Stratford on Avon. "Visitors can sit on the specially designed bench, gaze at the cottage, press a button and listen to one of four Shakespearean sonnets read by famous actors," the official website informs the prospective visitor. A live willow cabin made of growing willows, inspired by lines in Twelfth Night, is another feature, and a maze of yew.

The major Shakespeare garden is that imaginatively reconstructed by Ernest Law at New Place, Stratford on Avon, in the 1920s. He used a woodcut from Thomas Hill, The Gardiners Labyrinth (London 1586), noting in his press coverage when the garden was in the planning stage, that it was "a book Shakespeare must certainly have consulted when laying out his own Knott Garden". The same engraving was used in laying out the Queen's Garden behind Kew Palace in 1969. Ernest Law's, Shakespeare's Garden, Stratford upon Avon (1922), with photographic illustrations showing quartered plats in patterns outlined by green and grey clipped edgings, each centred by roses grown as standards, must have supplied impetus to many flower filled revivalist Shakespeare's gardens of the 20s and 30s. For Americans, Esther Singleton produced The Shakespeare Garden (New York, 1931). Singleton's and Law's plantings, as with most Shakespeare gardens, owed a great deal to the bountiful aesthetic of the partly revived but largely invented "English cottage garden" tradition dating from the 1870s. Few attempts were made in revived garden plans to keep strictly to historical plants, until the National Trust led the way in the 1970s with a knot garden at Little Moreton Hall, Cheshire, and the restored parterre at Hampton Court Palace (1977).

The conventions of Shakespeare Gardens were familiar enough in the 1920s that E. F. Benson sets the opening of Mapp and Lucia (1931) in the not quite recently widowed Lucia's "Perdita's Garden" at Riseholme, in words that epitomise Benson's dry touch:

An early Shakespeare garden was added in the anniversary year 1916 to Central Park, New York City. In honour of the Bard and the reading of literature, this area is one of eight designated Quiet Zones. It included a graft from a mulberry tree said to have been grafted from one planted by Shakespeare in 1602; that tree was cut down by Rev. Francis Gastrell, owner of New Place, however The tree blew down in a summer storm in 2006 and was removed. This garden is located near the Delacorte Theater that houses the New York Shakespeare Festival. According to information available on the Central Park web pages, the Shakespeare Garden there does still contain some of the flowers and plants mentioned in his plays.

The rich weave of associations engendered by Shakespeare Gardens is exemplified in the Shakespeare Garden of Cleveland, Ohio, where herb bordered paths, converge on a bust of Shakespeare. The requisite mulberry tree was from a cutting sent by the critic Sir Sidney Lee, a slip said to be from the mulberry at New Place. Elms were planted by E. H. Sothen and Julia Marlowe, oaks by William Butler Yeats, and a circular bed of roses sent by the mayor of Verona, from the traditional tomb of Juliet, planted by Phyllis Neilson Terry, niece of Ellen Terry. Birnam Wood was represented by sycamore maples from Scotland. The sundial was Byzantine, presented by the Shakespearean actor, Robert Mantell. Jars planted with ivy and flowers were sent by Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree, Rabindranath Tagore— as the "Shakespeare of India"— and Sarah Bernhardt. <blockquote>The Shakespeare Garden inaugural exercises took place on April 14th, 1916, the tercentenary year E. H. Sothen and Julia Marlowe were guests of honor. After speeches of welcome by city officials and Mayor Harry L. Davis, the orchestra played selections from Mendelssohn's "Midsummer Night's Dream," and the Normal School Glee Club sang choral setting of "Hark, Hark, the Lark" and "Who Is Sylvia?" A group of high school pupils in Elizabethan costume escorted the guests to the garden entrance and stood guard during the planting of the dedicatory elms Miss Marlowe climaxed the proceedings by her readings of Perdita's flower scene from A Winter's Tale, the 54th Sonnet of Shakespeare, and verses from the Star Spangled Banner. Her leading of all present in the singing of the National Anthem brought the impressive event to a close." is a Public Garden founded in 1991 by herbalist Marlene Cowdrey. Eight gardens line a courtyard on the University of Colorado campus in Boulder, Colorado. The gardens are placed near to the WPA built Mary Rippon Theatre, which is the major performance space for the Colorado Shakespeare Festival. The gardens are: Founder's, Kitchen, War of the Roses, Midsummer Night's Dream, Knot, Canon, Elizabethan, and a Highlight garden featuring each performance season's plants. Members of the Colorado Shakespeare Gardens are volunteers interested in gardens or Shakespeare or both. They research, design, plant, and maintain the gardens with oversight from CU. The various gardens are designed to display Elizabethan gardening techniques as well as feature plants. There is an audio visual tour.