250 



JOUENAL OF HOBTIOULTDBB AND COTTAGE GABDENER. 



( September 16, 1875. 



house, together with all his furniture, to the Czar ; but Evelyn 

 BOOH had to regret the aeeommodation he had allowed to His 

 Majesty, for in the month of May in that year we find him 

 petitioning the Lords of the Treasury that compensation be 

 made him for the damage the Czar had done to his house, 

 garden , and furniture. The well-known gardener, Mr. London's 

 report is as follows — 



^ " May 9tb, 1698. 



" Some observations made upon th^ rjardt'ns and planlatiotts which belong to 

 the honourable John Evelyn, Esijuirc, att his house of Sayen Court, in 

 Deptforcl, in the County of Kent. 

 " During the time the Zai" of Muscovie inhabited the said house, eeverall 

 disorders have been committed in the gardens and plantations, which are 

 obserred to bo under two heads : one is what can be repaired again, and the 

 other what cannot bo repaii-ed. 



"1, All the grass work© is out of order, and broke into boles by their leap- 

 ing and shewinR tricks upon it. 

 " 2. The bowling green is in the same condition. 



" 8. All that gi-oiuid which used to be cultiyated for eatable plants is all 

 overgronne with weeds and is not 

 manured nor cultivated, by reason 

 the Zar would not suffer any men to 

 worke when the season offered. 



" 4. The wall fruite and slander 

 fruite trees are unpriunod and un- 

 nailed. 



" 5. The hedges nor wilderness are 

 not cutt as they ought to be. 



*' 6. The graven walks aie all broke 

 into holes and out of order. 



" These observations were made 

 by George London, his Majesties 

 Master Gardener, and he certifies 

 that to putt the gaidens and plant- 

 ations in as good repair as they were 

 n before hie Zarrish Majestie resided 

 there will require the eumme of fifty- 

 live pounds, as is Justified by me. 

 "George London, 

 " Great dammages sre doue to the 

 trees and plants, which cannot be re- 

 paired, as the breaking the branches 

 of the wall fruit trees, spoiling two 

 or three of the finest true phillereas, 

 breaking severall holleys and other 

 Jiue plants." 



Lord Keeper Guildford de- 

 scribed Sayes Court as " most 

 boscaresque, being, as it were, 

 an examplar of his (Evelyn's) 

 book of forest trees." It long 

 since was pulled down, and its 

 gardens built over. Several 

 years previous to 1759 Sayes 

 Court, mansion, and part of 

 the grounds had been used as 

 the workhouse for the parish 

 of St. Nicholas, Deptford. 

 Then it became a depijt for 

 emigrants, and was pulled 

 down nearly twenty years 

 since. There is a small draw- 

 ing of the house and grounds 

 in a map of Deptford at- 

 tached to Evelyn's " Diary." 

 Evelyn was far in advance 

 of his age in almost all know- 

 ledge and judgment. After the great fire of London he pro- 

 posed that with the rubbish a quay should be formed from 

 the Tower to the Temple, wherebv the river there would be 

 always full and easy of access. Not succeeding in that, he 

 seems to have turned his thoughts towards preparing ma- 

 terials for re-erecting the city ; for in the next year, 1CG7, he 

 applied for a sole license for fourteen years, in conjunction 

 with Gabriel Sylvius, for their invention "of a kihi and furnaces 

 for burning bricks. 



Amongst the MSS. at Wotton are parts of two volumes 

 entitled " Elysium Britannicum," and the contents are speci- 

 fied, but the work was never completed. If it had been com- 

 pleted it would have been an " Encyclopre'dia of Gardening" 

 of Evelyn's time. A portion of it was finished and published 

 as " Kalendarium Hortense." It ia dedicated to Cowley the 

 poet, hia " deare and worthy friend ;" and in 1C90, writing to 

 Lady Sunderland, Evelyn said, "It is now enteriug on the 

 eighth edition. "Tis now almost fourty years since first I writ 

 it, when horticulture was not much advanced in England." 



Among the State Papers of the date 1664 (?) is a MS. of 

 fifty-seveu pages, being that " Kalendarium Hortense, or in- 

 structions for each month of what is required to be done in 

 the Orchard and Olitory Garden, and in the Parterre and 

 Flower Garden." There is also the table and table of contents 



Kg. 63.— John Evelyn, Esq. 



of his " Sylva," printed in 1664 ; also particulars of large Oak 

 trees found in different localities, with the prices for which 

 they were sold ; also discourses on cider by Dr. Smith and 

 Capt. Taylor. At the end are money accounts in Spanish of 

 the dates 1642, 1643, and 1651. Ono thousand copies of the 

 first edition of the " Sylva " were sold in two years, and the 

 author was naturally gratified by this success, so unusual in 

 those days, as well as by being able to inform the king that 

 the publication had caused in that same space of time " more 

 than two millions of timber trees to be planted, besides infinite 

 others." 



Evelyn in his "Diary" states many particulars relative to 

 twenty-six gardens he had visited in France and Italy, and 

 fourteen in England. Among the latter is that of the Earl 

 of Essex at Cashiobury, of which he says " The gardens are 

 very rare, and cannot be otherwise, having so skilfull an 



artist to govern them as Mr. 

 Cooke, who is, as to the me- 

 chanic part, not ignorant of 

 mathematics, and pretends to 

 astrology. There is an excel- 

 lent collection of the choicest 

 fruit." In its culture the gar- 

 dener named was certainly a 

 proficient. He is the Mosea 

 Cooke who, in 1679, published 

 a favoirrably known book on 

 " Baising Forest and Fruit 

 Trees." 



Evelyn gives still more 

 special details of Lord Claren- 

 don's mansion and gardens, 

 Swallowfield, in Berkshire, 

 " the delicious and rarest 

 fruits of a garden, the skill in 

 the flowery p.art, and the in- 

 numerable timber trees. There 

 is one orchard of one thou- 

 sand golden and other cider 

 Pippins." 



In 1700 Evelyn visited Bed- 

 dington, " the ancient seate of 

 the CarewB now decaying with 

 the house itself, heretofore 

 adorn'd with ample gardens, 

 and the first Orange trees that 

 had been seen n England 

 planted in the open ground, 

 and secnr'd in winter onely 

 by a tabernacle of boards and 

 stones removable in summer, 

 that standing 120 yeares, 

 large and goodly trees, and 

 laden with fruite, were now 

 in decay. The Pomegranads 

 beare here." 



Evelyn died at Wotton, 

 February 27th, 1705-6, and 

 was interred in the family vault there after a life of unwearied 

 utility, sincerely regretted by every man of science and every 

 patriot. 



Besides the works already mentioned, Evelyn published the 

 following relative to the cultivation of plants : " The French 

 Gardener," in 1658 ; " Terra, a Philosophical Discourse of 

 Earth," 1675; "Pomona," 1679; " Quintinye's Treatise of 

 Orange Trees," 1693 ; and " Acetaria, a Discourse of Sallets," 

 1699. 



NEW EARLY AND LATE STRAWBEEEIES. 



No. 2. 



The remaining sorts I have at present to notice are decidedly 

 late, and first of all Excelsior (fig. 54). This is a seedling the 

 second generation from Cockscomb, by which I have removed 

 the objectionable cockscomb shape altogether. The foliage 

 is dark green, and the habit of the plant very handsome, of 

 moderately dwarf and compact growth, much after the style 

 of Rivers's Eliza. The fruit is not so large as its parent, but 

 much handsomer and of regular conical shape from which it 

 never departs. 



The woodcut represents the ordinary run of the frnit, and 

 ia far from being a large specimen. I have frequently grown 



