Loudon points out that the Roman style of gardening was lost in England when the Romans abandoned this country at the beginning of the fifth century, but he surmises that, following the revival of gardening in France by Charlemagne, William the Conqueror would probably re-introduce it at the end of the eleventh century. Some little progress was made in the reigns of Henry I. and Henry II., and it was the former who formed the Park at Woodstock (1123), probably the first of which there is any record. In accord with the prevailing taste, it contained a labyrinth, which appears to have chiefly constituted the Bower so intimately associated with the fate of Rosamund.
But during the twelfth century there was very little of either design or taste in the arrangement of gardens. These latter were of limited extent and, because of the feudal broils that enlivened the monotony of existence, they were for the most part attached only to the larger establishments, and in them were confined within the Glacis, or first line of defence, which was a necessity of the times. Beyond the inevitable moat, orchards arose, wherein the horticulturally inclined among the baron’s retainers could indulge their taste for ornamental gardening; a taste which consisted then, according to Johnson, and continued to a much later age, “in having plants cut into monstrous figures, labyrinths, etc.”
So common a part of garden design did labyrinths and mazes become at this period and during the thirteenth century, that we find scarcely a plan among the many given by De Cerceau in his “Architecture,” issued about 1250, in which either a round or a square one does not appear. This brings us into the thirteenth century, an age wherein the taste for architecture and gardening spread northwards and especially took a firm hold in Holland, where then, and later, the wealthy merchant princes liberally encouraged almost all branches of horticulture. Thus encouraged the florists entered heartily into the business of supplying their patrons, and, aided by a suitable climate and the various inventions born of necessity, they made Holland famous throughout the world for its commercial horticulture. So careful, however, were the Dutch of every inch of land, much of it reclaimed, that they laid out their gardens with mathematical precision and consequent primness, carrying this principle into the very trees and plants themselves.