Pleach Alleys,
Mazes and Knots
Here’s where Ihc Carden Club plans to put its Water Gate in the Elizabethan
Garden. — (Aycock Brown Photo).
They’re in tlie vocabulary of those
planning garden at Fort Raleigh.
By INGLIS FLETCHER
A number of new words will be
added to the vocabulary of North
Carolinians, as the Elizabethan Gar¬
den project undertaken by the Gar¬
den Club of North Carolina gets under
way.
There will be talk of labyrinths.
Mazes and Knot Gardens and
pleached alleys; espaliered trees;
mounds and watergates, to bemuse
and befuddle husbands and friends of
the ten thousand women who arc work¬
ing on the plan to plant a garden as
a living memorial to the courageous
men and women who made the great
venture to establish the first English
speaking colony on Roanoke Island.
The garden will be on the ten-
acre tract held by the Roanoke Island
Historical Association. It will consist
of eight acres of wild natural garden,
symbolic of the land as it was when
the first colonists stepped ashore on
that historic spot. Two acres will be
in formal garden of the Elizabethan
period. It will extend from the high¬
way to Roanoke Sound, with a water-
gate entrance. This formal plan of
Knots, pleached alleys, labyrinths and
a maze, will symbolize the gardens
the colonists left behind in England.
The plot of ground adjoins Fort
Raleigh, with its Elizabethan fort re¬
cently restored by the National Park
Sen-ice; and the Waterside Theater
of Paul Green's "The Lost Colony."
North Carolina has its roots deep
in Elizabethan culture. It owes its very
beginnings to the adventurous spirit of
the Elizabethans on the sea: particu¬
larly to the seafaring men of the West
Country, Devon and Cornwall, those
heroic men who ventured the un¬
charted seas to bring glory and wealth
to their country and to their Virgin
Queen.
Two periods of history- blaze with
especial brilliance — the age of Pericles
of Athens and the Elizabethan period
of England.
The first sign of the new spirit of
adventure came the day when the
young Queen told Philip of Spain’s
ambassador that she owed nothing to
his master; that she owed gratitude
solely to her people. The influence of
Spain, France and European culture
had dwindled, and the beginning of an
English culture showed itself. This
came to a rich fruition through Spen¬
cer, Philip Sidney, Shakespeare, Ba¬
con and the two Hakluyts, in letters.
On the sea the Worthies of Devon
took first rank, Sir Walter Raleigh and
his brother Sir Humphrey Gilbert, his
cousin Sir Richard Grenville. Hawkins,
Drake, Amadas and a score of doughty
men who sailed from Devon and Corn¬
ish ports.
Gold was flowing from the New-
World, along the Plate Route into
Spain. Why should not wealth flow in¬
to Elizabeth’s treasury? The strug¬
gle for political power became mixed
with the rivalry of Protestant and
Catholic, a left over from in the days
of Henry the Eighth, and welded a
new national spirit.
England had had supremacy in land
battles in the days of the long-bow.
Why not continue the struggle on the
sea, and gain supremacy there? The
ports of Devon teemed with ships ready
to sail on the Western Ocean, and
strong men to sail them. The new con¬
ception of the breadth of the universe,
opened by the Copernicus theory,
was an added incentive.
The wealth in sugar, spices and
precious metals gave Sir Walter Ra¬
leigh his inspiration. Raleigh was a
courtier; he knew his Queen loved
gold, for herself and for England. He
was no adventurer, but his cousin Sir
Richard Grenville was by nature a
man of adventure. Grenville had pow¬
er and wealth. He was a soldier and
he owned ships; added to this he was
a leader of heroic proportions. He
was the commander selected to sail
with his ships and 108 men to Roa¬
noke Island, already explored by Ama¬
das and Barlowc.
In England the talk seethed with
opportunities in the New World. Men
wrote pamphlets extolling the island
and the waters; poets made verses.
Even the stage had its bit to offer.
Shakespeare wrote "The Tempest";
Chapman wrote "Eastward Ho."
The 108 men who sailed with Sir
Richard Grenville were West Country
men, many of them cadets of the pow¬
erful County families of Devon and
Cornwall. The names of these men
( Continued on
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THE STATE. NOVCMOCR
Ю.
1951
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