202 



A HISTORY OF GARDEXING IN ENGLAND. 



this date, the various terraces, trees, walks, summer-houses and 

 everything it contained being carefully described and valued.* 



After the Restoration, conservatories became more general, 

 and are noticed by several of the writers of the time. Houses 

 were built for the reception of "tender greens" at the Oxford 

 Botanic Garden, and later on at Chelsea Physic Garden. 

 The gardens of Essex House in the Strand possessed a fine 

 collection " of choicest greens," under the care of John Rose, 

 one of the most celebrated gardeners of that day. His 

 treatment of plants in cases is thus quoted b}- Rea : — " In spring 

 and autumn you must take some of the earth out of the cases, 

 and open the rest with a fork or other fit tool ... fill up again 

 with rank earth two parts dung well rotted." That orange-trees, 

 however, were still considered a great noveltv, the following 



ORANGERIE AT CHISWICK. FROM AX ENGRAVING BY ROCQUE, I736. 



extract from Pepys' Diary will show: — "25 June 1666. Mrs. 

 Pen carried us to two gardens at Hackney (which I every da}- 

 grow more and more in love with) Mr. Drake's one, where the 

 garden is good, and house and prospect admirable, the other my 

 Lord Brooke's, where the gardens are much better, but the 

 house not so good nor prospect good at all. But the gardens 

 are excellent, and here I first saw oranges grow, some green, 

 some half, some a quarter, and some full ripe, on the same tree, 

 and one fruit of the same tree do come a year or two after the 

 other; I pulled off a little one by stealth (the man being 



* Printed in Archcpologia, Vol. X, 1789. Reprinted in an Appendix to 

 this volume from original MS. in the Record Office, Parliamentary Survey.. 

 No. 72. 



