10 THE BOOK OF TOPIARY 



information to pass on to much later times ere we can 

 again take up the tale of Topiary. 



Loudon points out that the Roman style of gardening 

 was lost in England when the Romans abandoned this 

 country at the beginning of the fifth century, but he 

 surmises that, following the revival of gardening in 

 France by Charlemagne, William the Conqueror would 

 probably re-introduce it at the end of the eleventh 

 century. Some little progress was made in the reigns 

 of Henry I. and Henry II., and it was the former who 

 formed the Park at Woodstock (1123), probably the 

 first of which there is any record. In accord with the 

 prevailing taste, it contained a labyrinth, which appears 

 to have chiefly constituted the Bower so intimately 

 associated with the fate of Rosamund. 



But during the twelfth century there was very little 

 of either design or taste in the arrangement of gardens. 

 These latter were of limited extent and, because of the 

 feudal broils that enlivened the monotony of existence, 

 they were for the most part attached only to the larger 

 establishments, and in them were confined within the 

 Glacis, or first line of defence, which was a necessity of 

 the times. Beyond the inevitable moat, orchards arose, 

 wherein the horticultural! y inclined among the baron's 

 retainers could indulge their taste for ornamental 

 gardening ; a taste which consisted then, according to 

 Johnson, and continued to a much later age, " in having 

 plants cut into monstrous figures, labyrinths, etc." 



So common a part of garden design did labyrinths and 

 mazes become at this period and during the thirteenth 

 century, that we find scarcely a plan among the many 

 given by De Cerceau in his " Architecture," issued about 

 1250, in which either a round or a square one does not 

 appear. This brings us into the thirteenth century, an age 

 wherein the taste for architecture and gardening spread 

 northwards and especially took a firm hold in Holland, 



