Ancient (1611) Morus nigra at a cornerof the formal West Garden, probably the sole survivor of four (one at each corner), Popularly said to have been planted by Elizabeth I as a princess, when she lived at the Tudor Old Palace, but more likely to have been planted by John Tradescant the Elder when he became Head Gardner for the first Earl of Salisbury, Lord Robert Cecil. There are four more mulberries pn a terrace above the adjacent Knot Garden, planted in 1990 as a gift of the CVhateau de Villandry (France) to the Dowager Marchioness, Lady 'Molly' Salisbury, while she was restoring the gardens..There are four more black mulberries from the 1970s at either end of the pool in the East Garden. The Hatfield House archives contain bills from Tradescant the Elder for the purchase of several Black mulberries from Leyden, Rouen and Paris nurseries. There are unconfirmed reports of 500 mulberries also being purchased, presumably for a sericulture enterprise, but there is no more information at present. A 1973 memoir by David Ceci, son of the 4th Marquess of Salisbury, recalls "...Sunday afternoons in the summer with tea spread on two long white-clothed tables in the shade of a mulberry tree, planted, it is said, by James I, and my mother pouring out tea from a silver teapot with an ivory handle."

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