Kenilworth Castle Plants New Elizabethan Garden

Love Garden to Woo Elizabeth I in Flower Again in Central England

Oct 6, 2009

When Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, tried one last time to win the hand of his queen, Elizabeth I, he created a living love letter to her - a garden for the ages.

Alas, Dudley never won Elizabeth’s hand and his grand Elizabethan garden was lost to time.

Now, more than four centuries later, Dudley’s great Elizabethan love garden has been restored at his once-grand seat, Kenilworth Castle, in the heart of England.

Garden archaeologists and English Heritage, which took charge of Kenilworth in 1984, have discovered the placements of Dudley’s bejeweled aviary, Atlas fountain and tree-covered arbors. Curators have added plants that the Elizabethans would have known, often relying on heritage plant growers for authentic species.

And how did archaeologists know what to look for? They are fortunate to have a letter, written during Elizabeth I’s fourth and final stay at Kenilworth in 1575, describing the entire garden layout.

Although Queen Elizabeth I would never marry Dudley, she did dote on him as her favorite, making him Earl of Leicester and giving him Kenilworth Castle in 1563.

The great castle, now a ruin, dates back to Geoffrey de Clinton, Henry I's treasurer, who began the massive Norman keep at the core of the fortress in the 1120s. Under Henry II, Kenilworth became a royal castle.

King John strengthened Kenilworth between 1210 and 1215, and in the 1300s, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, rebuilt the great hall and staterooms. By the time of Henry VIII, Elizabeth I’s father, the castle was known for its “many fair chambers.”

Dudley spent a fortune converting Kenilworth into a great “prodigy house,” designed to receive the Queen and her court on their ceremonial progresses through the land. He even built her a dancing chamber in a new building and a small palace-style Gatehouse.

Dudley’s Final Love Gesture is to Plant a Passionate New Elizabethan Garden

Elizabeth I visited Kenilworth several times on her summer progresses, and it was for her fourth and final visit in 1575 that Dudley pulled out the stops. He added on to the castle and ordered his French gardener Adrian to plant a “privy,” or private, garden for Elizabeth and her closest courtiers.

Elizabeth stayed from July 9-27, 1575, her longest visit in a courtier’s house during any of her progresses. Dudley presented dances, plays, musical performances and hunts for his beloved, and it was while Elizabeth was off hunting that Adrian allowed Robert Langham to sneak into the queen’s private garden.

Langham was a textile trader who worked for Dudley as Keeper of the Council Chamber Door. His trader’s eye meant he could measure the garden and its fountain, obelisks and arbors at a glance. He wrote about all he had seen in a letter that survives from 1575.

Kenilworth Castle was long a ruin when curators planted what they thought was an authentic Elizabethan garden, taken from a 1656 map, in the 1970s. But modern ground-penetrating archaeological techniques have proved that the garden was in the wrong spot – with the wrong plants.

Now, English Heritage has spent more than $3.3 million to put the Elizabethan garden back to Dudley’s layout and plant it with the fragrant old roses, pears, hollyhocks, carnations and wild strawberries of his original plan.

A Sexy Garden to Woo a Queen

“You have to forget everything you’ve ever learned about gardens and step back in time,” said Blue Badge Guide Roger Bailey. “It was meant to be a sexy thing – after all, he was trying to grab the hand of Elizabeth.”

The new Elizabethan garden also blooms with wormwood, aromatic herbs and scented flowers such as Sweet Williams, purple rocket, stocks, wallflowers and hollyhocks. Eglantine roses, associated with the cult of Queen Elizabeth, will soon cover the trellises of split sweet chestnut lathes.

The plants are set to peak each year in July, the month of Elizabeth’s last, great visit in 1575.

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