GARDENING UNDER WILLIAM AND MARY. 223 



visited in December, 1691 ; others equally well known he passes 

 over. He does not notice the large nursery between Spitaliields and 

 Whitechapel, the owner of which Meager refers to as "my very 

 Loving friend Captain Qarrle," and gives a long list of fruit trees, 

 any one of which this friend can "furnish," besides "divers other 

 rare and choice plants." ^ He omits, also, Essex House in the 

 Strand, and Somerset House; also Southampton House, Blooms- 

 bury, where the gardens were designed by Lord William 

 Russell, who was beheaded in 1683. The garden at Fulham, 

 which had been made famous by Bishop Grindal, who introduced 

 the tamarisk in Elizabeth's reign, was further improved by 

 Bishop Compton at this date, and there are splendid hickory and 

 other trees of his planting still to be seen there : — " He had a 

 thousand species of exotick plants in his stoves and gardens, 

 in which last place he had endenizened a great many that have 

 been formerly thought too tender for this cold climate. There 

 were few days in the year, till towards the latter part of his life, 

 but he was actually in his garden, ordering and directing the 

 Removal and Replacing of his Trees and plants.'" t 



Besides the private gardens, there were the parks, which 

 even then added beauty to the country round London, St. 

 James's Park, and " another much Larger, Hide parke, w"^'' 

 is for Riding on horseback, but mostly for coaches, there 

 being a ring railed in, round w^'' a gravel way, .... the rest 

 of the park is green, and full of deer, there are Large ponds 

 w"' fish and fowle." J Beyond Hyde Park was Kensington, a 

 favourite palace of King William, and there, again, was a 

 good garden, begun by him, and completed under Queen Anne. 

 The gardeners employed there were the famous London and 

 Wise, who owned the large nursery at Brompton, hard by. 

 This was the finest nursery of the day, and they kept an 

 immense collection of plants. The tender greens from the 

 gardens at Kensington were housed during the winter at 

 Brompton, where, although a fine collection in themselves, 



* Leonard Meager, The English Gardener, 1688, p. 60. 



t Switzer, Ichnographia, 171S. Bishop Compton, born 1632, died 1713. 



X Celia Fiennes' Diary. 



