In the "Roman de Berte" _Charles Martel_ dines in the garden, when the rose is in bloom--_que la rose est fleurie_--and in "La Mort de Garin" a big dinner-party is given in the garden. Naturally the garden was the place of all places for lovers. In "Blonde of Oxford" _Blonde_ and _Jean_ meet in the garden under a blossoming pear-tree, silvery in the blue moonlight, and in the "Roman of Maugis et la Belle Oriande" the hero and heroine "met in a garden to make merry and amuse themselves after they had dined; and it was the time for taking a little repose. It was in the month of May, the season when the birds sing and when all true lovers are thinking of their love." In many of the illuminated manuscripts of these delightful _romans_ there are pictures of ladies gathering flowers in the garden, sitting on the sward, or on stone seats, weaving chaplets and garlands; and these little pictures are drawn and painted with such skill and beauty that we have no difficulty in visualizing what life was like in a garden six hundred years ago. So valued were these gardens--not only for their flowers but even more for the potential drugs, salves, unguents, perfumes, and ointments they held in leaf and petal, seed and root, in those days when every castle had to be its own apothecary storehouse--that the owner kept them locked and guarded the key. Song, story, and legend are full of incidents of the heroine's trouble in gaining possession of the key of the postern gate in order to meet at midnight her lover who adventurously scaled the high garden wall. The garden was indeed the happiest and the most romantic spot in the precincts of the feudal castle and the baronial manor-house. We do not have to depend entirely upon the _trouvères_ and poets for a knowledge of Medieval flowers. A manuscript of the Fifteenth Century (British Museum) contains a list of plants considered necessary for a garden. Here it is: violets, mallows, dandelions, mint, sage, parsley, golds,[3] marjoram, fennel, caraway, red nettle, daisy, thyme, columbine, basil, rosemary, gyllofre,[4] rue, chives, endive, red rose, poppy, cowslips of Jerusalem, saffron, lilies, and Roman peony. [3] Marigolds. [4] Gilliflower. Herbs and flowers were classed together. Many were valued for culinary purposes and for medicinal purposes. The ladies of the castle and manor-house were learned in cookery and in the preparation of "simples"; and they guarded, tended, and gathered the herbs with perhaps even more care than they gave to the flowers. Medieval pictures of ladies, in tall peaked head dresses, fluttering veils, and graceful, flowing robes, gathering herbs in their gardens, are abundant in the old illustrated manuscripts. III _The Italian Renaissance Garden_