In the 1350s poor countrymen began to have cottages and gardens which they could call their own. Were these fourteenth-century peasants, then, the originators of the cottage garden? Not really: the making and planting of small mixed gardens had been pioneered by others, and the cottager had at least two good examples which he could follow. His garden plants might and to some extent did come from the surrounding countryside, but a great many came from the monastery gardens. As to the general plan of the small garden, in so far as it had one at all, that had its origin not in the country, but in the town.

　　The first gardens to be developed and planted by the owners or tenants of small houses town cottages as it were, were almost certainly those of the surburbs of the free cities of Italy and Germany in the early Middle Ages. Thus the suburban garden, far from being a descendant of the country cottage garden, is its ancestor, and older, in all probability, by about two centuries. On the face of it a paradox, in fact this is really logical enough: it was in such town that there first emerged a class of man who was free and who, without being rich, owned his own small house: a craftsman or tradesman protected by his guild from the great barons, and from the petty ones too.moreover, it was in the towns, rather than in the country, where the countryside provided herbs and even wild vegetables, that men needed to cultivate potherbs and salads. It was also in the towns that there existed a demand for market-garden produce.

　　London lagged well behind the Italian, Flemish, German and French free cities in this bourgeois progress towards the freedom of having a garden; yet, as early as the thirteenth century, well before the Black Death, Fitz Steven, biographer of Thomas a Becket, was writing that, in London: “On all sides outside the house of the citizens who dwell in the suburbs there are adjoining gardens planted with trees, both spacious and pleasing to the sight.”

　　Then there is the monastery garden, quoted often as a “source” of the cottage garden in innumerable histories of gardening. The gardens of the great religious establishments of the eighth and ninth centuries had two origins: St. Augustine, copying the Greek academe did his teaching in a small garden presented to him for that purpose by a rich friend; thus the idea of a garden-school, which began among the Greek philosopher-teachers, was carried on by the Christian church. In the second place, since one of the charities undertaken by most religious orders was that of healing, monasteries and nunneries needed a garden of medicinal herbs. Such physic gardens were soon supplemented by vegetable, salad and fruit gardens in those monasteries which enjoined upon their members the duty of raising their own food, or at least a part of it. They tended next to develop, willy-nilly into folower gardens simply because many of the herbaceous plants grown for medicinal purposes, or for their fragrance as strewing herbs, had pretty flowers—for example, violets, marjoram, pinks, primroses, madonna lilies and roses. In due course these flowers came to be grown for their own sakes, especially since some of them, lilies and roses notably, had a ritual or religious significance of their own. The madonna lily had been Aphrodite's symbolic flower, it became Mary's; yet its first association with horticulture was economic; a salve or ointment was made from the bulb.

　　Much earlier than is commonly realized, certain monastic gardeners were making remarkable progress in scientific horticulture—for example, in forcing flowers and fruit out of season in cloister and courtyard gardens used as conservatories—which had lessons to teach cottagers as well as castle—dwellers.

　　1. Small city gardens were first established in certain Italian and German cities____.
　　[A] in the central areas, unlike the earlier English gardens
　　[B] by citizens whose forebears had obtained permission from the monks
　　[C] by citizens who had surplus land by their cottages
　　[D] on lines that anticipated cottage gardens

　　2. What reason is given for the development of gardens in towns?
　　[A] There were special market areas in the large towns.
　　[B] The medieval citizen could cultivate the plants he wanted.
　　[C] The town dwellers longed for the edible wild plants they knew in their youth.
　　[D] The market sellers had not enough of their own cultivated herbs for sale.

　　3. The religious orders had gardens because they_____.
　　[A] did their healing in the gardens
　　[B] liked their food strongly spiced with herbs
　　[C] required them for their healing work
　　[D] conducted their teaching mainly out of doors

　　4. Special interest was taken in some plants, because of their____.
　　[A] ancient origin
　　[B] fragrance when crushed
　　[C] association with special seasons
　　[D] beauty and their spiritual associations

　　5. What cottage gardeners could learn from the monasteries was_____.
　　[A] how to control growth by special conditions
　　[B] the need for sheltered conditions
　　[C] how to choose the best plants for that climate
　　[D] the need for earlier planting

　　參考答案：1-5 DBCDB

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