THIS week's Bloom! festival is not the only flower show in town this summer.

For ten weeks, Sally Tierney's Elizabethan Garden is filling Shakespeare's Village with fragrance divine at Europe's first ever pop-up Shakespearean theatre on the Castle car park (and it has a mention in Bloom! too).

Sally, a Silver-Gilt medal winner at the Royal Horticultural Society’s Chelsea Flower Show, has drawn inspiration from Romeo And Juliet, one of four plays being staged at Shakespeare's Rose Theatre until September 2.

"I've created an Elizabethan 'Knot' garden, which traditionally has a really intricate shape, and in the space I've been given I've put in ornate box-edged beds of highly scented cottage flowers, roses, lilies, honeysuckle and herbs, with a fountain and lavender in the middle, and a garden abour each for Juliet and Romeo at either side," says Sally, who has designed gardens and run her company Yorkshire Garden Designer for 20 years.

""Elizabethan gardens would have been productive, with herbs, fruits and vegetables and flowers to make their homes smell fragrant, and they absolutely prized beautiful-smelling plants and flowers, hence roses and lavender were particular favourites as Elizabethan life was rather smelly."

Juliet's garden has soft, romantic colours, not least the white rose of Yorkshire; Romeo's colours are stronger, more striking, masculine, with the red rose of Lancashire to the fore. "Roses were cherished for their healing powers, glorious scents and beautiful blooms and have symbolism in literature and religion too," says Sally.

"In Elizabethan times, these were the only two colours of rose, so we have put in a third rose: Rosa Mundi [meaning 'the rose of the world], an old white and red variety that would have been around in those days, as an harmonious conglomerate to symbolise their love." An espalier tree, meanwhile, stands at the back to represent "Romeo and Juliet's first meeting alone in a beautiful orchard".

"It's fantastic to be part of Shakespeare's Rose Theatre," says Sally, who has lived in York since 1991 and attended the gala-night performance of Macbeth last Wednesday. "I just love the concept of a pop-up Shakespeare theatre in York, where they can turn a car park into a theatre for ten weeks and then it's back to how it was. Here we are, at a theatre that Shakespeare would have been perfectly at home in. How wonderful!"

In Sally's Elizabeth Garden can be found thyme, sage, mint and marigolds that would have been dried for cooking or used by an apothecary, such a fatal influence on the outcome of Romeo and Juliet, but more often a vital force in treating illnesses.

"Given the importance of poison in Romeo And Juliet, I've hidden a deadly poisonous plant in the garden, but I'm not revealing where," says Sally.

Did you know?

Sally Tierney studied horticulture at Askham Bryan College, in York, and attained a degree in landscape management at the University of Leeds. As an apprentice with English Heritage at Belsay Hall, Castle and Gardens, she honed her skills in creating historically-orientated gardens.