Shakepeare mentions lots flowers in his writings – here are some that you can grow in your English Garden today.
Carnations, Columbines, Cowslips
Daffodils,
"When daffodils begin to peer,
With heigh! the doxy over the dale,
Why, then comes in the sweet o' the year;
For the red blood reigns in the winter's pale."
from "The Winter's Tale"
Daisies - daisies in Shakespeare’s day meant innocence and purity
Ophelia says in Hamlet -“There's a daisy. I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my father died."
Lady’s-smock or Cuckoo flower,
"When daisies pied and violets blue
And lady-smocks all silver-white
And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue
Do paint the meadows with delight"
Love's Labours Lost (5.2.900-4)
Lily - Elizabethan gardeners used to grow the white lily candidum, , the tiger lily and the Crown Imperial - Fritillaria imperiales .
Marigold
"Here's flowers for you;
Hot lavender, mints, savoury, marjoram;
The marigold, that goes to bed wi' the sun
And with him rises weeping: these are flowers
Of middle summer, and I think they are given
To men of middle age."
from The Winter's Tale
Oxlip
"I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine:
There sleeps Titania sometime of the night,
Lull'd in these flowers with dances and delight."
from A Midsummer Night's Dream
Pansies - the Fairy King Oberon uses the special properties of crushed pansy petals to make his wife, Titania, fall in love with a donkey – because it had the power when brushed on the eyelids of people who were are fast asleep to make them fall in love with whoever or whatever they see first when waking!
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Primroses
Roses, there are over 50 references to this beautiful flower
"What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet."
from Romeo and Juliet
"The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem
For that sweet odour which doth in it live."
from Sonnet 54
Violets
Hamlet called the violet’s perfume
"Sweet, not lasting, the perfume and suppliance of a minute, no more"
in Shakespeare’s time violets were associated with early death.
So see if you can find a space in your garden for one of these lovely traditional flowers.
Enjoy your Garden!
