A Lecture on Shakespeare’s Garden by Sir Roy Strong

This year sees the opening of a revamp of the garden on the site of Shakespeare's house; New Place in Stratford-upon-Avon. Earlier in the 1920s that site saw the first attempt to recreate a garden of a type the playwright would have known. It is still there today and is an early landmark in garden re-creation. But why did they want to do such a thing? Shakespeare and the garden is a fascinating subject, for without any real basis in fact Shakespeare, by the Victorian age, was turned into a hands-on gardener. The quest for the writer's garden ushers onto the stage a bizarre list of characters among them the sensationalist novelist Marie Corelli, Edward VII's mistress Daisy, Countess of Warwick and E. F. Benson's notorious Lucia, Queen of Riseholme.