228 A HISTORY OF GARDES I SG IS ENGLAND. 



and Philip, who died in 1669, seems to have encouraged Meager 

 in his work, as indeed Meager adds he assisted all his " other 

 servants that had any inclination or endeavour to the Practise 

 of Good Husbandry." Meager probably shows us a type of 

 the quiet old-fashioned " neatly-ordered " gardens, throughout 

 England. The quaint view of Netherton, in Cornwall, is from a 

 sketch made by Edmond Prideaux, about 1712, of a garden of 

 this kind, Coryton Park,''^ in Devonshire, is a good example 

 still existing. It was laid out about 1680, and when alterations 

 were made in 1756, the old garden was left as a kitchen-garden, 

 and is still untouched. The old wall, which divides the upper 

 or new from the lower or older garden, is of a quaint zig-zag 

 form ; the simple lines of the rest of the garden might have been 

 taken from Meager's book. A path all round, two large square 

 parterres, two smaller ones, with two corners curved to allow 

 room for a path round a pond and fountain, and across the centre 

 of each plat, a clipped yew-hedge following the same curve, and 

 terminating at the edge of the gravel path with a cypress-tree, 

 two statues, a sundial, and opposite the fountain against the outer 

 wall an old garden house or orangery, compose the design. 



This kind of plan was already becoming old-fashioned, and 

 the tendency was to make larger gardens than could be kept up 

 in a formal style. Sir William Temple, in 1685, saw the danger 

 when he wrote, " As to the size of a garden which will perhaps in 

 time grow extravagant among us, I think from four or five to 

 seven acres is as much as any gentleman need design." His 

 own garden at Sheen was not large, but beautifully kept ; of this 

 wrote Evelyn, in 1688: "the wall fruit trees are most exquisitely 

 naii'd and train'd, far better than I ever noted." His " Retreat " 

 later in life in Surrey he called Moor Park after the favourite 

 garden of his youth, Moor Park, in Hertfordshire, which he 

 describes so delightfully, as it was, he says, "the perfectest figure 

 of a garden I ever saw."t At the new Moor Park he laid out a 

 garden in the Dutch style. It is not to be wondered at, that the 

 statesman who negotiated the Triple Alliance should prefer the 



* Belonj^ing to Rev. Marwood Tucker. 



f Sir Wm. Temple Upon the Garden of Epicurus or of Gardening in the 

 vear 1685, printed in his Miscellaneous Works. 



