Déduit's Garden
When people write about Medieval gardens, they often mention the Roman de la Rose. I have been curious about this poem for many years, so I finally decided to order a translation through a local library.
I really only read the first part of the Roman de la Rose, this was written by Guillaume de Lorris; he was born about 1212 and died around 1237, leaving his poem incomplete. The Roman de la Rose was given a brief conclusion by an anonymous poet; and then forty years later, Jean de Meun added another eighteen thousand lines to the poem. I just skimmed through Jean de Meun's addition, it is less charming than Guillaume's poem and it doesn't have much to say about gardens.
The main reason why the Roman de la Rose is often mentioned in books about Medieval gardens is that it helps us to understand how Medieval people felt about gardens.
The Roman de la Rose describes a young man's dream, in which he enters the garden of an elegant gentleman named Déduit; there the young man falls in love with a perfect red rose. The name Déduit has been translated into English as both "Mirth" and "Pleasure"; I don't speak French, so I don't know which word is more correct. The garden of Déduit is an ideal pleasure garden, and it tells us more about what Medieval people wanted their gardens to be than about what Medieval gardens were really like.
Déduit's garden is a walled orchard filled with more kinds of trees than the poet can list. The poet says that many of these trees were introduced from the lands of the Saracens and he mentions date palms along with spice trees such as cinnamon. The garden is not just filled with exotic trees, but also with trees which were commonly grown in Medieval orchards, such as quinces, peaches, pears, cherries, and many kinds of nut trees. While the garden also includes tall shade trees, this love of fruit and nut trees seems especially characteristic of Medieval gardens.
The trees in Déduit's garden are described as being spaced 5 or 6 fathoms apart. A fathom is 6 feet or 2 meters, so this spacing probably was common in Medieval orchards.
The branches of the trees are described as forming a canopy of dappled shade which keeps the heat of the sun from damaging the tender shoots of the young grass. The poet's delight in luxuriant turf is obvious; the grass growing next to refreshing streams is described as being "short and thick, where one might lie with his sweetheart as upon a couch".
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