Sidney and Gardens

Abstract

Through an exploration of later Elizabethan horticulture and landscape design, this chapter analyses two significant moments in Sidney’s works that evoke garden spaces or experiences. The first example is Kalander’s estate in Book 1 of the New Arcadia, which is described as ‘field, garden, and orchard’, making ‘order in confusion’, where art and nature inform each other. The second example is the encounter represented in the country-house entertainment of The Lady of May; there, in the liminal space of the grove, the drama plays out the political and social values of a place where garden and forest intersect. In both examples, the setting of cultivated land, both art and nature, influences the representation of aesthetic, social and political agency.