“The Monks’ Garden, Ashridge” from A Book of English Gardens by M. R. Gloag, published in 1906. The illustration is by Katharine Montagu Wyatt (1866-1946), known primarily for her paintings of gardens and flowers. Ashridge is a country estate in Hertfordshire, England owned by the National Trust, known for both its beautiful early 19th century house and its elaborate gardens.
Of the Monks’ Garden, the book notes:
“Sir Jeffrey Wyattville finished his uncle’s elaborate design for the immense house (begun in 1808), at the same time making a few improvements in the Gardens, such as placing stone vases about the Lawns and the Gothic Cross in the centre of the Monks’ Garden. The cross forms a Fountain, and is surrounded by a basin of water, octagonal in shape, with raised pedestals of Gothic design at intervals to support pots of flowers. It has the appearance of having been removed from some roof, and is of painted iron.
“The plan of the Monks’ Garden is square, and there is good authority for saying that, if this Garden is not the actual one made by the monks for their herbs and vegetables, it is carried out on similar lines. Imagination, therefore, can repeople it with the grey-clad monks wandering among the gravel walks and Box-edged knots which form this prototype of a medieval Garden – without fear of disillusion in the garish light of uncompromising fact.”