Colorado Shakespeare Gardens
self-guided tour
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Much Ado About Nothing

The orange you see in this garden is a modern sweet orange (Citrus x sinensis) rather than a Seville orange. Seville oranges are a sour fruit, much too sour to eat directly from the tree. Rather the kitchens of the wealthy made use of oranges in their cookery. Even today, preserves of Seville oranges -- what you call marmalade -- are widely favored in England.

Much Ado About Nothing

 

This play is about pairs of lovers who, by passing through trial and mischief, find their way to marriages by the end. Shakespeare uses conversations overheard in a knot garden to confound one proud pair of potential lovers. Another pair's relationship is destroyed by a plot based in greed, and their love recovered through trickery. 

 

Enjoy this slideshow of the plants in our Much Ado About Nothing garden: