University of Virginia Library

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V. 12

HOUSE OF THE GARDENER & THE
MONKS' VEGETABLE GARDEN

V.12.1

THE GARDENER'S RANK

Since the monks lived primarily on a vegetable diet, the
management of the monastic gardens was a responsibility
of prime importance. The official in charge of this task was
the Gardener (hortolanus), often not a monk but a layman.
On the Plan of St. Gall he is provided with his own house.
His high position in the monastic community is reflected by
the fact that within this house he occupies an aisle all by
himself, and, more significantly, that this part of the house
is equipped with a corner fireplace, a privilege not accorded
to any other person in the monastery's agricultural sector.

The Gardener's House lies in the eastern tract of the
monastery next to the Cemetery, at the head of the Monks'
Vegetable Garden. Together with the latter it occupies a
plot of land 125 feet long and 52½ feet wide.

V.12.2

HOUSE OF THE GARDENER & HIS CREW

The House of the Gardener (fig. 426) measures 35 feet by
52½ feet. It consists of "the house itself" (ipsa domus), i.e.,
the common living room with its central fireplace[439] and three
aisles attached to it, one to the east, one to the north, and
one to the south. The west wall of the center room remains
exposed and contains the principal entrance. The southern
aisle of the house serves as "dwelling of the gardener"
(mansio hortolani). The eastern aisle is divided into two
rooms, which are designated as "sleeping quarters for the
servants" (cubilia famulorum). They are separated from one
another by a vestibule which gives access to the Garden.
The northern aisle of the house is "a storage place for the
garden tools and for the vegetable seeds" (hic ferram̄ta
reseruant' & seminaria olerū).

Abbot Adalhard in his manual on the economic management
of the monastery of Corbie gives us an account of the
kind of tools we may expect to find in this room; he also
tells us by whom they are supplied and kept in repair:

In our reconstruction of the Gardener's House (fig. 427,
A-F) we have kept the roof line of the peripheral spaces on
the same level, which leaves the upper parts of the walls on
the two narrow sides of the center space exposed as timber
framed gables. Another alternative would have been to lead
the rafters on the two narrow sides of the house up to a
cross piece near the ridge of the main roof, as we have done
in all of the larger guest and service buildings where hipped
roofs have clear constructional advantages. In small houses,
such as the Gardener's House, the solution here suggested
might have been the simpler one, provided that the rafters
of the main roof were protected against longitudinal displacement
by some secondary provision, such as a center
purlin framed into collar pieces. This is a very common
stabilizing device in English roof construction of the thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries (a typical example is St.
Mary's Hospital in Chichester, above fig. 342). Whether
we can expect it to have been used on the continent in
Carolingian times is another question.

V.12.3

THE MONKS' VEGETABLE GARDEN

The Monks' Vegetable Garden (HORTUS) lies to the east
of the Gardener's House and to the south of the shadowing
fruit trees of the Cemetery (fig. 426). It covers a rectangular
plot of land 52½ feet wide and 82½ feet long, and is entirely
surrounded by a wall or a fence, having a single entrance
at the side which faces the Gardener's House. Internally the
garden is divided into two rows of planting beds separated
from one another by a central path that carries the inscription
"Here the planted vegetables flourish in beauty" (Hic
plantata holerum pulchre nascentia uernant"). There are nine
planting beds in each row. They are separated from one another
by eight crosswalks, and from the surrounding wall or
fence, by a continuous peripheral walk, all of the same width.
We have to imagine the planting surface of these beds as
being raised above the level of the walks and framed in by
planks held in place by stakes. This is suggested by a passage
in Walahfrid Strabo's Hortulus[440] as well as a variety of
paintings and drawings of medieval gardens, such as the
famous hortus conclusus (Paradiesgärtlein) in the Städelsches
Kunstinstitut of Frankfurt, painted around 1410 by an
unknown Rhenish master;[441] the charming illustrations of
the labors of the month of April in the Heures de Turin (fig.
428), or the illumination of a garden with clipped trees in
the Grimani Breviary (fig. 429).[442]

2 Consuetudines Corbeienses, chap. 4, ed. Semmler, in Corp. Cons.
Mon., I, 1963, 381. For difficult and unexplainable terms, see translation
and annotations to this passage, III, 108f and notes 76-82.

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Each bed of the Monks' Vegetable Garden is used for
the cultivation of a specific type of plant, the name of which
is entered by the hand of the second scribe in the pale ink
that characterizes his writing.[443] Read from top to bottom in
the sequence in which they were written they are:

SOUTHERN ROW

NORTHERN ROW

Then the garden patch is baked with the gust of the South wind and the heat
of the sun, and the flat-planted bed, lest it slide away, is raised a little higher than
the flat ground with wooden squares.

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Sörrensen points out that most of these plants, although
not native to the north, are still today the main stock of a
well-planned vegetable garden.[446] Their choice discloses that
this garden was primarily a kitchen garden. It does not
include such crops as beans, lentils, beets, carrots, and the
bulkier cabbage varieties whose cultivation required larger
plots. These heavier crops must have been raised in the
outlying fields.

In a monastery like the one represented on the Plan of
St. Gall, around 250 men had to be fed each day.[447] The
Abbey of Corbie, which had to feed over 400 persons daily,
maintained four gardens outside the monastery walls under
the direction of four gardeners (hortolani) who were assisted
by eight prebends (prouendarii) and a large number of
workmen from the neighboring villae whose exclusive task
it was, between April 15 and October 15, to hoe and weed
the land as well as to repair its huts and fences.[448] This and
the fact that each gardener had at his disposal an ox and
a plow suggests that the gardens outside were large.[449]

In addition to the crops harvested from the gardens and
fields managed by the monks themselves, there were those
which the monastery received as tithes from its leased
possessions. Accounts of the Abbey of St. Gall tell us of
deliveries of beans from its lands at Gossau, Geberardiswiller,
Arnegg, Tiefenbach, and Opferdingen, as well as of
large shipments of leek, such as the "thirty loads of leek"
(XXX pondera porri) which were annually transported to
St. Gall from Hohenweiler in the Voralberg or Scheidegg
in Bavaria.[450] Lastly, the local produce was enriched by
staples imported from the south, such as olives, lemons,
dates, raisins, pomegranates, and chestnuts. Most of these
latter goods the Abbey of St. Gall imported from the
monastery of Bobbio in Lombardy, with which it entertained
a lively trade.[451]

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