MALVERN Horticultural Society’s 2014 autumn programme began with a visit from Nathalie Mignotte to talk about Medieval Gardens.

Nathalie has much experience in horticulture varying from lecturing to her current hands-on role in the industry in Gloucester. She has had a particular interest in the history of gardening from its origins to the present day.

Much of what we know about life in the Middle Ages comes from pictorial records from artists of the time and Nathalie's talk was well illustrated with photographs of such paintings.

She covered the basic three types of gardens – symbolic, enclosed ones, delightful ones and monastic ones. The symbolism had much to do with religion, and it would be hard to overstate the influence of the church on people’s lives at the time. This has carried forward to today, and most people will recognise the origin of the common name of the climbing Passiflora – the Passion flower. The delightful ones bear the forerunners of our planting today, and you would have found cowslips, roses, violas, daisies and shrubs under cultivation. Monastic gardens served mainly to provide a peaceful, meditative purpose for pious reflection, but they also had a functional purpose in providing food for the monks.

Within this broad framework, Nathalie illustrated early landscaping with the creation of lakes, coppicing of hazel and willow and the evidence of Exotic wildlife such as peacocks, storks. We later went on to discuss the development of medicinal plants, and the influences of Islamic and Oriental Gardens. The subject is a wide one.

Nathalie’s talk gave us a fascinating insight into medieval gardens and the lives of owners and workers. It was interesting to see what was important to them and why it was, and we could project forward to some parallels today. While we may not want to go back to those times, Nathalie showed us that we do have reason to be grateful for these early trend setters.

ADRIANHOLMES