8 INTRODUCTION 



herbs, grafts, and other curiosities to his great content " 

 (Wood's " Athenae "). 



The art of grafting was also practised in the Garden by 

 " The Reverend and Ingenious Robert Sharrock, LL.D. and 

 Fellow of New College, who, after many unsuccessful tryals 

 of grafting one Fruit upon another, made at last a very 

 pleasant one, and to good advantage too, upon different 

 Vines, which in so great measure answer'd their hopes, that 

 they have now signal proof in the Physick Garden of the 

 white Frontiniac grafted upon the Parsly Vine, growing and 

 bearing very well ; and to this advantage, that they think the 

 early ripening stock of the Parsly Vine to conduce some- 

 what to the earlyer ripening of the white Frontiniac, naturally 

 late. 



" They have also grafted the early red-cluster or Currant 

 grape upon that large, luxuriantly growing Vine, called the 

 Fox-grape, which seems to produce much fairer and stronger 

 Fruit than that grape is usually upon its own stock " (Plot, I.e.). 



The plan on page 7, taken from Loggan, and published in 

 1675, w iU serve to show the manner in which the Garden was 

 laid out at the period of its original foundation, and the 

 Conservatory for tender exotic plants, 60 feet long. It backed 

 on to the High Street, to the eastward of the Danby gateway, 

 and was covered with a roof of stone slates. 



In Bobart's time, fashion in gardening was setting in in 

 favour of the stiff symmetry, geometric walks, clipped shrubs, 

 and the buxus multiformis of Pliny. Nor were other gardens 

 without their examples of topiary art : " a Dial cut in Box was 

 a rareity in New College: in Exeter Garden they fashioned 

 their College arms in the same material. British gardeners," 

 wrote a Fellow of Magdalen,* who must have seen the Garden 

 within a few years of the death of Bobart, " instead of humour- 

 ing nature, love to deviate from it -as much as possible. Our 



* Addison, " Spectator," No. 414, 1713. 



