216 .1 UISTURV OF GARDENING IN ENGLAND. 



she notices " the gardens are large, and are capable of being 

 made very ffine, they now remain in the old fashion." Lord 

 Sandwich, near Huntingdon, was having a new garden made. 

 " The gardens and wilderness and greenhouse will be very fine 

 when quite ffinished, with the dwarf trees and gravell walks. 

 There is a large fountaine or bason which is to resemble that 

 in the privy garden at Whitehall, which will front the house. 

 The high terrass walks look out on the road." 



At Sir John St. Barbe's house, near Rumsey, new gardens 

 were also being made — " not finish'd but will be very ffine, 

 w"' Large Gates open to the Grounds beyond, some of w"^'' 

 are planted with trees." Such walls with " severall places 

 with grates to Look through," was the latest development 

 of the craving to look beyond the garden, which we have 

 noticed in earlier times. Such arrangement of spaces, with 

 gates or iron bars, in the walls, is constantly noticeable in 

 the views of gardens early in the eighteenth century. This 

 desire to extend the view, led to the planning of the park 

 and avenues to correspond with the open spaces at the side 

 or end of the garden walks. These attempts to harmonize the 

 garden with its surroundings, gradually developed, until the 

 walls were dispensed with, and the "landscape" style 

 superseded the older forms. In studying the changes in 

 design, it seems to me that there was no sudden " leaping 

 the garden wall." We must look for the beginnings of the 

 landscape style in the gradual change or decadence of the 

 old formal school. The Dutch style, introduced by William IIL, 

 was an exaggeration of the old manner of clipping trees. 

 Topiary work in yew, box, and other "greens," was carried 

 to such an excess ; the gardens were so overcrowded with cut 

 trees, as to become the laughing-stock of the succeeding 

 generation, and so bring about their own destruction. 



The word " knot " does not often occur in books of this 

 date, and the word "parterre," which takes its place, requires 

 some explanation. Meager, in the English Gardener, 1688, 

 gives a list of herbs " fit to set knots with," of which " Dutch 

 or French Box, it is the handsomest, the most durable, and 

 the cheapest to keep." And in the same chapter, he refers 



