insideKENT Magazine Issue 28 - July 2014 | Page 130

OUTDOORLIVING

© Mick Dudley

Shakespeare in the Garden
BY WILLIAM DYSON, CURATOR AT GREAT COMP GARDEN, SEVENOAKS
If you want to celebrate Shakespeare’s 450th birthday this year, where better to do it than a Kentish garden?
An inspiration for many projects, numerous
garden writers have keenly documented the
flowers mentioned in Shakespeare’s plays over
the centuries, including the planting of a small
arboretum of trees (mentioned in his works) at
Anne Hathaway’s Cottage and grand schemes
such as the revived Shakespeare Garden in
Central Park, originally built in New York in 1880.
While our own garden at the 17th-century manor
house of Great Comp in Platt is not an ode to
the literary great, visitors can find many of the
plants mentioned in Shakespeare's plays and
sonnets dotted around, such as violas,
columbines and lilies.
However, we are big fans of Shakespeare here
in our tiny corner of Sevenoaks, and do invite his

dramatic work into our garden every summer.
Last year, Great Comp hosted an outdoor
production of Richard III, complete with menacing
clouds, while this year we will celebrate the Bard’s
birthday by welcoming The Changeling Theatre
Group back to perform Romeo and Juliet on the
lawn. The scent of phlox from the long borders
and primroses opening will provide the perfect
ambience to Shakespeare’s tragic romance.
Shakespeare’s depiction of the botanical is
inherently romantic and lives on with us today;
for example, Oberon’s description of Titania’s
bower (where she sleeps) in A Midsummer Night's
Dream is wonderfully romantic: “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.”

The Winter’s Tale is also speckled with botanical
references and mentions of carnations, primroses
and daffodils: "Hot lavender, mints, savoury,
marjoram."
Yet, possibly the most recognised botanical
quote from Shakespeare comes from the play
of the moment, Romeo and Juliet: “What’s in a
name? That which we call a rose by any other
name would smell as sweet.” Roses have long
been regarde B7