Shakespeare Gardens

NYC Central Park’s Shakespeare Garden by Happy Gillmore

There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance; pray,
love, remember: and there is pansies. that’s for thoughts.
Hamlet (4.5.170-1)

A friend recently attended a lecture about flowers mentioned in Shakespeare. She was very excited about this lecture. I told her to visit the Shakespeare garden in Central Park, Manhattan, NY. This garden bills itself as the only rock garden in Central Park and the plantings are based on the plants in Shakespeare’s home garden as well as his plays. But I should have told my friend that she could visit about two dozen Shakespeare’s gardens in the US alone.  See here.

I wonder how many there are in England and the rest of the world?  Wouldn’t it be fun to take a trip to all of these Shakespeare gardens to see how each of the designers decided to lay out their gardens using the flowers Shakespeare wrote about!?!  I wonder how many private gardeners in the world have created Shakespeare’s gardens in their yards.

Shakespeare Comedy gardens (7) by KarlGercens.com

The Hampton Court Palace Flower Show featured Shakespeare gardens in this year’s flower show with also vegetables that were grown during the time of Shakespeare from 1564 to 1616, which is the 16th and 17th century, to encourage private gardeners to do just that- create their own Shakespeare’s garden .
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