is more fit for that delight, than to know what be the flowers
and plants that do best perfume the air. Roses, damask and red, are fast
flowers of their smells; so that you may walk by a whole row of them,
and find nothing of their sweetness; yea though it be in a morning's
dew. Bays likewise yield no smell as they grow. Rosemary little; nor
sweet marjoram. That which above all others yields the sweetest smell
in the air is the violet, specially the white double violet, which comes
twice a year; about the middle of April, and about Bartholomew-tide.
Next to that is the musk-rose. Then the strawberry-leaves dying, which
yield a most excellent cordial smell. Then the flower of vines; it is
a little dust, like the dust of a bent, which grows upon the cluster in
the first coming forth. Then sweet-briar. Then wall-flowers, which are
very delightful to be set under a parlor or lower chamber window.
Then pinks and gilliflowers, especially the matted pink and clove
gilliflower. Then the flowers of the lime-tree. Then the honeysuckles,
so they be somewhat afar off. Of beanflowers I speak not, because they
are field flowers. But those which perfume the air most delightfully,
not passed by as the rest, but being trodden upon and crushed, are
three; that is, burnet, wildthyme, and watermints. Therefore you are to
set whole alleys of them, to have the pleasure when you walk or tread.

For gardens (speaking of those which are indeed princelike, as we have
done of buildings), the contents ought not well to be under thirty acres
of ground; and to be divided into three parts; a green in the entrance;
a heath or desert in the going forth; and the main garden in the midst;
besides alleys on both sides. And I like well that four acres of ground
be assigned to the green; six to the heath; four and four to either
side; and twelve to the main garden. The green hath two pleasures: the
one, because nothing is more pleasant to the eye than green grass kept
finely shorn; the other, because it will give you a fair alley in the
midst, by which you may go in front upon a stately hedge, which is to
enclose the garden. But because the alley will be long, and, in great
heat of the year or day, you ought not to buy the shade in the garden,
by going in the sun through the green, therefore you are, of either side
the green, to plant a covert alley upon carpenter's work, about twelve
foot in height, by which you may go in shade into the garden. As for the
m