The earliest wildernesses: Their meanings and developments

Abstract

For England, the second half of the sixteenth century was a time of upheaval and social change, and of great discoveries in the New World. The Protestant religion became firmly established through the long reign of Elizabeth I, and English translations of the Bible allowed those who read to have a conversation with God by themselves without the interventions of a priest. Wealth was created for many at court including merchants and lawyers, who built new houses on estates where the word wilderness started being applied to parts of their gardens. This essay will examine how the term arose and was used in gardens by looking at the meaning of the word in social parlance and its literary context, and at descriptions of some gardens themselves. A common modern explanation as to what the wilderness might have been in early gardens is that they represented how man had tamed nature. But is that actually what people were thinking at the beginning of the seventeenth century when they were creating these spaces in their gardens?

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