46 HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY OF TREES. “PART to# 
garden at Lambeth,” Gibson observes, “ has many curiosities 
in it, and perhaps the finest striped holly hedge in England. 
He has many myrtles, not the greatest, but cut in the most 
fanciful shapes that are anywhere to be seen. He has a walk 
arched over with trelliswork, and covered with vines, which, 
with others running on most of his walls, without prejudice to 
his lower trees, yield him a deal of wine.” 
The commercial gardeners at*this time (1691) are thus enu- 
merated by Gibson :—-London and Wise had the only extensive 
nursery; Versprit excelled in hollies and ‘ greens.” Ricketts 
and Pearson were small cultivators for sale. ‘The latter had 
* abundance of cypresses, which, at 3 ft. high, he sold for 4d. 
apiece ; and, being moderate in his prices, and very honest in his 
dealings, he got much chapmanry.” Darby, at Hoxton, is said 
*‘ to be master of several curious greens that other sale gardens 
want.’ Darby is said to have raised many striped hollies by in- 
oculation; and Captain Foster (who appears also to have sold or 
exchanged his garden productions) to have propagated the same 
plants by grafting. Darby also kept a book of dried specimens 
of plants, to show to his customers. Clements, at Mile End, 
had many curious * greens,” and, the year that Gibson visited 
him (1691), made “ white muscadine, and white Frontignac 
wine,” better than any he (Gibson) had elsewhere tasted. It is 
worthy of remark, that all these “ sale gardeners” had green- 
houses, and that they piqued themselves principally upon their 
plants in pots and on their florists’ flowers. It is singular that 
Gibson does not speak of the Bishop of London’s garden, 
though it must have been in its state of greatest perfection at the 
time he wrote; and also that he barely mentions the nursery of 
Messrs. London and Wise, which, Evelyn informs us, in the 
preface to his translation of Quintinye’s Complete Gardener, 
published in 1701, ‘ far surpassed all the others in England 
put together.” : 
The Brompton Park Nursery may, indeed, be considered as 
the first establishment of the kind which became celebrated. It 
was founded by Messrs. Cooke, Lucre, London, and Field, in ~ 
1681. Lucre, or Lukar, was gardener to the Queen Dowager 
at Somerset House; Field was gardener to the Earl of Bedford, 
at Bedford House in the Strand; Moses Cooke was gardener to 
the Earl of Essex, at Cashiobury, and author of a work entitled 
The Manner of raising Forest Trees, &c., 4to, 1676. George 
London was gardener to Bishop Compton, and afterwards 
chief gardener first to William and Mary, and afterwards to 
Queen Anne. Lukar died in 1686: Cooke and Co. succeeded. 
Cooke retired in 1689, when Henry Wise, who had been an 
apprentice to Rose, the royal gardener, as London had also 
been, became the sole proprietor. In 1693-4, he entered 
