The garden as a refuge
Focus
The garden is closely associated with the idea of Paradise. A space where the temporality would be that of the golden age and which would be preserved from external evils. For this reason, the garden is seen as a saving refuge.
No garden without a fence
One of the characteristics of a garden is that it is enclosed by a fence. Depending on the period, the nature and height of the enclosure vary: a stone wall, palisade or trellis of plants, a gate or even a wolf’s leap to allow views. Its sole function is to protect the garden from intruders, whether man or beast, and to preserve the harmony that reigns there. The garden that is probably most representative of this subtraction from the world is a form of medieval garden, also known as the hortus conclusus, the walled garden. This type of garden has not survived to the present day, but some gardens, such as the Jardin des Cinq Sens in Yvoire, have managed to recreate its spirit.
Life-saving plants
The hortus conclusus is a garden whose modest size is due to its installation within a pre-existing building, in a courtyard or a cloister. The hortus conclusus of cloisters is planted with simple plants, used to nourish and heal both body and soul. These included mint, lavender, thyme and sage, whose Latin name, salvia, means ‘that saves’ or ‘that heals’, and illustrates the dual healing power of a plant that is good for the body and for the soul. The use of plants in pharmacopoeia is recorded in numerous medieval works, the best known of which is undoubtedly Physica by the famous nun Hildegarde of Bingen, which lists plants and their effects. Of course, flowers were not absent. The most prominent, and undoubtedly the most symbolic, are the rose and the lily, appreciated for their fragrance and beauty. The rose is associated with the Virgin Mary and, by assimilation, with the noblest of loves, as mentioned in the Roman de la Rose by Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meung, while the lily is an allegory of purity.
Le décor de l’hortus conclusus
Depending on whether it is civil or religious, its ornamentation is more or less rich, but it is always imbued with a strong symbolic meaning. In terms of layout, the hortus conclusus is mainly square or rectangular in shape. It is criss-crossed by perpendicular paths that define the parterres or parquet floors where the plants are grown. At the centre of the garden, where the paths meet, there is a fountain, which also provides water for irrigation. The fountain is reminiscent of the fountain in the Garden of Eden, the fons vitae, the fountain of life. Sober in religious gardens, the central fountain can become a veritable work of architecture in civil gardens, inviting richer ornamentation as we approach the Renaissance. A whole range of garden furniture appeared, including benches, cradled pergolas and trelliswork. The setting became idyllic, conducive to secular pleasures, music, dance and love.
Painting and literature bear witness to what gardens were like in the Middle Ages. In Boccaccio’s Decameron (c. 1313-1375), seven young women and three young men retreat to remote villas in Florence to escape the Black Death of 1348. Getting away from the city and its foul air to get closer to nature was already common practice in ancient Rome.
There you can hear the birds singing, and see the plains and hills covered in green foliage. Fields of wheat ripple like the sea. There are trees of a thousand kinds, and the sky may be angry, but it does not reject this radiance of eternal beauty, which is more seductive than the empty walls of our city. The air is also fresher than at home. Decameron p. 18-19
They spent their retirement in two hortus conclusus. The second is described in these words:
Then the door to a garden opened [...]. As soon as they entered, visitors had a general impression of marvellous beauty. They began to take a closer look at its splendours. All around the garden, and more than once even in the middle, stretched wide avenues, as straight as the flight of an arrow, and covered with arched vines [...] As for the edges of the avenues, they disappeared entirely under bushes of white and red roses and jasmine. In the morning, and even around midday, you could stroll everywhere with delight in the fragrant shade, untouched by the sun's rays. I don't have enough time to describe the number, nature and arrangement of the plants that adorned the site. [...] In the middle of the garden was a meadow, with turf so dark that it seemed black, and a thousand flowers of many colours. Orange and cedar trees surrounded it with their deep, vivid green [...] In the centre of the meadow stood a marble fountain of dazzling whiteness, the chasing of which was a marvel. In the middle was a colonnade surmounted by a statuette. [...] The life of this garden, the harmony of its design, the trees, the fountain and the streams that flowed from it were such a delight to the ladies and the three young men that a single exclamation escaped from all their lips: if paradise could be made on earth, what other aspect would it have?
Sources
Moulinier Laurence. La botanique d’Hildegarde de Bingen. In: Médiévales, n°16-17, 1989. Plantes, mets et mots. Dialogues avec André-Georges Haudricourt, sous la direction de Françoise Sabban, Odile Redon et François Jacquesson. pp. 113-129.
DOI https://doi.org/10.3406/medi.1989.1142
www.persee.fr/doc/medi_0751-2708_1989_num_8_16_1142
Laurence Moulinier. Hildegarde de Bingen, les plantes médicinales et le jugement de la postérité : pour une mise en perspective. Les plantes médicinales chez Hildegarde de Bingen, Oct 1993, Gent, Belgique. pp.61-75.
https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00608791/document
Michel Baridon. Les Jardins. Paysagistes – Jardiniers – Poètes . Paris. Bouquins. 1998. 1240 p.
