Vassar's Shakespeare Garden

Approaching the Shakespeare Garden, "the crown jewel of the Vassar grounds"

...the true meaning of a Shakespeare garden is to house plants that were mentioned by Shakespeare in his plays and sonnets - but, since we’re not in England and we can’t maintain a lot of the plants mentioned that were used in English gardens, what we do is we combine plants that were mentioned by Shakespeare with plants that were grown in English gardens during Shakespeare’s time, to also give more of a display purpose to the garden, a lot more flowers... we kind of blend the two worlds together and everyone’s happy, and it keeps the garden looking nice, and it still has a lot of meaning to it. (Jennifer Dawson's interview with Vassar College Head Gardener Martin Pinnavaia)