GOLDEN AGE OF TOPIARY 19 



to bring the yew into fashion for hedges, declaring it 

 to be "as well for a defence as for a succedaneum to 

 cypress, whether in hedges or pyramids, conic spires, 

 bowls or what other shapes." And further he adds, " I 

 do again name the yew, for hedges, preferably for beauty 

 and a stiff defence, to any plant I have ever seen." 

 Evelyn's residence from 1652 to 1694 was Sayes Court, 

 Deptford, a home made famous to students of history 

 because of its occupation by Peter the Great, of Russia, 

 in 1698, to whom it was sub-let by Admiral Benbow. 

 Peter the Great did not take the same care of the garden 

 as Evelyn had taken, and his destruction, in part at least, 

 of a famous holly hedge, caused the owner to regard 

 the Russian Czar as a " right nasty tenant." An old 

 writer informs us, with reference to Sayes Court, that 

 Evelyn had ( ^a. pleasant villa at Deptford, a fine garden 

 for walks and hedges, and a pretty little greenhouse 

 with an indifferent stock in it. He has four large 

 round philareas, smooth clipped, raised on a single 

 stalk from the ground, a fashion now much used. 

 Part of his garden is very woody and shady for 

 walking ; but not being walled, he has little of the 

 best fruits." 



The beginning of the end was not now far to seek. 

 One of our greatest modern landscape gardeners, Mr 

 H. E. Milner, has written: "Precise designs of clipped 

 box and yew are not out of place, if the building has a 

 character that is consonant with such an accompaniment." 

 Not satisfied with a few clipped trees in suitable posi- 

 tions, or with a part of the garden devoted to examples of 

 Topiary, owners and gardeners alike, in the times I have 

 briefly reviewed, seemed to have laboured to fill their 

 gardens with illustrations of geometric figures, in box or 

 yew ; with the quaintest patterns and wierdest shapes, 

 caricaturing birds and beasts, and imitating architecture 

 and things of common use. Distorted vegetation met the 



