The Role of Fountains and Statuary in English Monastic Gardens

Surviving records of English monastic gardens are scarce, but a twelfth-century plan of Canterbury offers a tantalizing glimpse. It depicts cloisters enclosing a herbarium, a garden fountain, and a conduit, with a pond, orchard, and vineyard just beyond the walls. This solitary document remains the most complete visual record from that early period.

Continental Blueprints for English Gardens

Because monasteries of the same order followed remarkably uniform layouts, historians reconstruct the English monastic garden by studying continental counterparts. The ninth-century plan of the Benedictine monastery of St. Gall in Switzerland is especially valuable. It reveals a walled complex divided into four distinct zones: the cloister garth, an area for fountains and statuary, a vegetable garden, and a combined orchard and burial ground.

The Cloister Garth and Its Central Fountain

The cloister garth was a square green space planted with grass and shrubs, quartered by two crossing paths. At its center stood a savina—a decorative outdoor fountain that supplied water for drinking and washing. These cloisters sat south of the church, framed by communal buildings and adorned with significant garden statuary.

Water, Herbs, and the Kitchen Garden

Fountains and statuary were strategically placed near the hub of daily activity. The moisture they provided nurtured a rich palette of medicinal herbs: peppermint, rosemary, white lilies, sage, rue, corn-flag, pennyroyal, fenugreek, roses, watercress, cumin, lovage, tansy, kidney bean, fennel, and savory. The kitchen garden, on a larger scale, comprised eighteen identical oblong beds, each dedicated to a different vegetable or pot-herb such as onion, garlic, parsley, coriander, chervil, dill, lettuce, poppy, savory, radish, parsnip, carrot, cabbage, beet, leek, shallot, celery, and corn-cockle. Nearby stood the hortulanus’s (head gardener’s) house.

The Burial Ground: A Garden of Remembrance

In the burial ground, honorary statues, trees, and shrubs were interspersed among the graves, creating an ornamental effect that feels strikingly modern. A large garden fountain served as a focal point, encircled by apple, pear, plum, service medlar, fig, quince, peach, hazelnut, almond, chestnut, walnut, laurel, and pine trees. Amid this luxuriant canopy of foliage, water, and stone, the graves themselves were almost hidden from view.