26 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS 



Le Notre at Versailles, and most of the French 

 design brought into England was introduced by 

 him or his favourite pupil, George London. 

 Another name that is connected at this time with 

 Gardens and Gardeners, is that of Sir William 

 Temple, the patient lover for seven years of 

 Dorothy Osborne and the happy possessor of her 

 charming love-letters now acknowledged to be 

 "a precious piece of history." 



Temple was a contemporary of Evelyn, who 

 mentions in his Diary his visits to Temple's Gardens 

 at Sheen. To these gardens Temple devoted him- 

 self till 1688, after a long life of diplomacy and 

 then later to Moor Park, in Surrey, called by him 

 after the favourite Garden of his childhood's days, 

 and described by him " as the perfectest figure of a 

 Garden I ever saw at home or abroad." Temple 

 turned his attention to the fruit Garden, possess- 

 ing the pretty idea that the flower Garden " was 

 more the ladies' part than the man's," and it can 

 easily be imagined what a lovely Garden of 

 flowers the delightful Dorothy Osborne must 

 have created. 



The Chinese mode of Gardening (which many 

 people think was the means of introducing the 

 irregular or natural style into England), was first 

 mentioned by Temple. He says that he is quite 

 aware that there may be other forms of Garden- 

 ing " wholly irregular that may have more beauty 



