Walahfrid Strabo and the Hortulus

Walahfrid Strabo’s Hortulus (De cultura hortorum) is a Carolingian didactic poem of 444 hexameters, probably composed in the early 840s and dedicated to Grimald of St Gall. Drawing on classical models (Vergil, Columella) while grounded in monastic practice, it stages a small instructional garden in which plant portraits function as both practical guidance and moral exempla. The work survives in a compact but coherent dossier led by Vatican Reg. lat. 469 and Leipzig Rep. I. 53. Early humanist editions (Vienna 1510; Nuremberg 1512) shaped later reception. Recent scholarship debates place and date across Aachen, a Speyer interlude, and Reichenau, with the majority view favouring Reichenau. The poem remains a key witness to Carolingian garden culture without amounting to a prescriptive garden ordinance.