INTRODUCTION xlv 



pened to be parish churches also ; as was the case at St. Albans, 

 Tewkesbury, Malvern, and elsewhere. At the first -named place 

 lived the earliest English author who treated on the subject of 

 gardening. This was Alexander Necham, master of the grammar 

 school at St. Albans, at the end of the twelfth century, and 

 afterwards abbot of Cirencester. He was born about the year 

 1157 and died in 1217. His work, " De Naturis Rerum," largely 

 compiled from the Roman agricultural writers, yet notices 

 varieties of fruit which were then cultivated, as the St. Regie pear, 

 and also enumerates apples, chestnuts, peaches, almonds, and 

 figs, all of which, no doubt, were cultivated in the abbey orchard. 

 From him we learn that the process of grafting was then, as now, 

 generally practised, but he makes no mention of the vine ; hence 

 we conclude the Romans had not a vineyard at Verulamium, 

 or one in Saxon and Norman times in the monastic domain of 

 St. Alban's Abbey. The first Earl of Salisbury, however, planted 

 a vineyard at Hatfield, which is noted as being in existence when 

 Charles I was taken there as a prisoner. 



Other gardening works in manuscript, followed by printed works, 

 appeared in rapid succession. Gerard's Great Herbal was issued 

 from the printer's hands, 1577. Wheat in 1596 was five guineas the 

 quarter, and Lord Burleigh spent ten pounds per week in giving 

 the poor employment in his garden at Theobalds in Hertfordshire. 

 After Gerard came John Parkinson, who published his delightful 

 folio Paradisus Terrestris, or a Garden of Pleasant Flowers, in 

 1629. Philip Miller's Gardener's Dictionary appeared in folio 

 in 1731, and John Abercrombie's Every Man his Own Gardener 

 in 1770. 



In the nineteenth century gardening made rapid strides. John 

 Claudius Loudon began to practise as a landscape gardener in 1803, 

 and though, like Tusser and Arthur Young, failing at farming, 

 advanced horticulture by his works, especially his Encyclopaedia 

 of Gardening, 1827, and his Encyclopedia of Plants, 1829, also 

 his Encyclopedia of Agriculture. These, with his other works, 

 mark a distinct epoch in both our farm and garden literature, with 

 which farming and gardening went side by side, acting and reacting 

 most beneficially in the evolution of agriculture and horticulture. 



The establishment of the Horticultural Society of London (now 

 the Royal) in 1804 under the auspices of Sir Joseph Banks, Mr. 

 (afterwards Sir) T. A. Knight, and other eminent scientific 

 and practical horticulturists, gave an impetus to gardening 

 and garden literature that is even yet not exhausted, but even 

 more and more extending in scientific and practical gardening. 

 Indeed, in the present state of horticulture England is ahead of 

 all other countries in the taste for general gardening. The grounds 

 and gardens attached to the residences of the nobility and gentry 

 are replete with esculent vegetables, fruits, and ornamental plants, 



