‘The true monarch of flowers’ is how in 1602 Emanuel, Prince of Portugal, addressed the old and famous Carolus Clusius (1526–1609) – naturalist and at that moment prefect of the botanical garden at the university of Leiden in Holland. The prince asked Clusius for a grape hyacinth on behalf of his wife Emilia of Orange-Nassau, who had picked up ‘the gardening curiosity in which she takes a singular pleasure’ from Marie de Brimeu, Princess of Chimay and a lifelong friend of Clusius. And it was Marie de Brimeu – known in her time for the gardens which she designed and planted with rare flowers in the Netherlands – who hailed Clusius as ‘the father of all the beautiful gardens in this country’.

These courtly praises which acknowledge Clusius's merits and fame in flowery terminology direct us to a number of topics about which we will hear much more in the course of this book, such as long friendships celebrated and indeed formed by the gift exchange of plants; women and their involvement in gardens; the fashion of rare bulbs; the passion for plants and gardening, curiosity and collecting; and the fascination with rarity in Europe during the period 1550–1610. Those topics in their turn steer us towards themes that are at the heart of this study.